Category: First World War

Chronicles From World War One: Jewish Civilians in Eastern Europe: “If It Be True … A Terrible Indictment Against Russia” – The Jewish Chronicle, July 30, 1915

By August of 1915, slightly over a year had transpired since the Great War’s beginning.  The war’s unprecedented effects, awareness of which had by now become apparent to all observers,  would continue through the subsequent three years.  (And, beyond.)

By this time – as evidenced through examples of news items and investigative reports in the Jewish and general news media – information about the dire situation and appalling treatment of Jewish civilians in the Eastern War Zone, particularly in Poland, amidst the advance and retreat of armies of the Central Powers and Allies (well, the latter specifically being Imperial Russia), had become readily available.  By August, 1915, evidence of this – vastly more than mere anecdote and rumor – had reached such a level of pervasiveness, depth, and consistency that on August 13 The Jewish Chronicle published the editorial, “If It Be True… A Terrible Indictment Against Russia”, which was simultaneously news analysis, an opinion piece, and a tempered voice of alarm and outrage.

The editorial was authored by “Mentor”, under whose name innumerable essays, musings, and thought pieces – often focused upon Jewish Nationalism – were published in the Chronicle during and after the Great War.  I’m not familiar enough with the history of The Jewish Chronicle to know if “Mentor” was a moniker for the newspaper’s publisher or chief editor, a pen-name under which the writings of multiple individuals appeared under ostensible authorship of one person.  Or even, if “Mentor” was a member of the Jewish community not actually on the staff of the Chronicle.  Given the consistency of both Mentor’s wonderful literary style, and the consistent themes and opinions of his essays and editorials, I think the most likely simplest explanation is the simplest: Mentor was one person.

In any event, Mentor’s essay concerning the treatment of Jewish civilians by the Russian Army is careful and tempered; analytical and measured; powerful and impassioned.  Notably, he doesn’t actually address the issue at hand until well (well!) into the body of his essay, devoting his first four paragraphs, in tones almost abstract and academic, to concerns about the very propriety of expressing thoughts that might be construed as being even remotely critical of any aspect of the war’s conduct.  This is expressed in light of the mood of the British public, the necessity of not impinging upon relations between Britain and Russia under the imperative of maintaining the Triple Alliance, and possible (though unarticulated) fears about the perception of the “loyalty” of British Jewry, as perceived via criticisms of an ally of Britain – Czarist Russia – expressed in the Chronicle. 

The predicament being, how does one criticize his country’s ally, when that ally, through policies emanating from the highest positions in its civilian and military leadership, is treating one’s people – to use the apt word – “abhorrently?”  Specifically, “What has to be said here about Russia, about an Ally of this country, must be confessed to be singularly abhorrent reading, the more abhorrent because Russia is the country’s Ally.  For my part, however, I cannot believe that a clear statement of the matter to which I feel it incumbent to draw public attention, such as will be attempted, is in the remotest sense traitorous, for it is written in loyalty to truth.  I cannot believe the British Government, allied though it be to the Government of Russia, will so deem it.  Loyalty to truth, the denunciation of infamies, even when committed by the friends and allies of this country, cannot be disloyalty to England – the fount of honor, the palladium of freedom.”

In the central part of his essay, Mentor presents the reader with accounts of the Russian military’s forced deportation of Jews from Galicia and Bukovina – who astonishingly included Jewish soldiers of the Russian army who’d been recuperating from their wounds, let alone children and the aged.  This is followed by accounts of the immediate reaction to these events and policies by members of the affected Jewish communities, and, subsequently, by “prominent” members of Russian Jewry (named not indicated), the latter of which eventuated in the orders for deportation being annulled, albeit conditionally.

In the essay’s concluding paragraphs, Mentor focuses upon the origin of the Russian government’s policies vis-a-vis Jews, and other subject nationalities, imputing that the former arises (and has arisen…) through the influence of “German anti-Semites and German anti-Semitism,” seemingly casting greater responsibility for these events indirectly on Germany, rather than directly on Russia. 

He then concludes his thoughts with the same focus – and the same concerns – with which the essay began:  Upon the concept of Loyalty.  (Capital “L” loyalty, that is.)  For if loyalty there be, it can neither be one-sided, nor unreciprocated.

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“They were not soldiers on the battlefield in the conventional meaning of the term, but they were true soldiers on life’s battlefield, fighting an unequal contest against overwhelming odds.  And they refused their liberty, their freedom, their lives, their homes, because these could be gained only by a demeaning condition; they preferred exile to a dishonoring pact “inconsistent with the dignity of Judaism”.” 

“IF IT BE TRUE…”
A Terrible Indictment Against Russia
The Jewish Exponent
August 13, 1915

“Mentor,” in The Jewish Chronicle
(Reprinted from The Jewish Chronicle of July 30, 1915)

IT IS a commonplace of the world-struggle which in a few days will have been raging for a whole year that the sufferings caused by the war have fallen more heavily upon Jews than upon any other section of the population involved.  Perhaps, however, the very hardest measure that has been dealt out to the Jews has not been the direct effects of battle.  The hardest measure has been the persistent suspicion that has been leveled at them on all hands.  The hardest measure has been that Jews who, as a people, have the fault, if such could really be deemed a fault, of being abnormally loyal, even loyal to excess, have been pilloried as treason-mongers.  That there are black sheep in every flock, and that there are Jews who will stoop to treasonable practices must necessarily be in a body so distinguished for loyalty as are our people.

It is the way of nature to produce abnormalities.  But the loyalty of Jews to the land of which they are citizens has been proved in a thousand fires.  That loyalty cannot be purchased nor suppressed.  It is the way of the Jew, a part of his being, the very essence of his psychology.  The loyalty of the Jew is not confined to material considerations.  His history is in itself a demonstration of his loyalty to great principles and to the greatest of all – to Truth.  For his métier has been, and is, to be a passive if not an active witness of Truth before all the world.  For that he has suffered, for that he suffers, and for that he will suffer till the end of the variegated chapter which he is contributing to the history of mankind.

What I am about to say may possibly be deemed by some, mostly of the shallow and the unthinking, to be in some way disloyal when measured by their notions of patriotism.  Patriotism, especially in the stress and storm of wartime, however, takes unto itself remarkable contortions.  Men and women – of both sexes – lose even their average balance of intellect as soon as the war drum begins to throb.  Their anxiety to prove their patriotism – who prove what ought never to be in question? – impels them to the most extraordinary devices for satisfying this aspiration, so that they come to mistake for patriotism what is mere hysteria.  We are at war with the German nation, and, according to some of these unbalanced souls, the mere fact that we are at war with that people is proof that every individual of them is devoid of every scarp and vestige of qualities that are virtues and has become endowed with every quality which is vicious and evil.  Equally because in the political whirligig England has become allied to certain Powers, the people of those countries possess, according to these hysterical patriots, all the virtues.  It never crosses the mind of these people that these very allies could have ever been at enmity with England – as Russia was very recently, as France was for generations – at enmity and subjected to the same unreasoning prejudice of this worthless sort of self-styled patriot.  This “cockeyed” patriotism helps not even a little bit, it hinders greatly.  This patriotism runs mad and will never win a war.  The “Hymn of Hate” has been a deterrent to German in the prosecution of her campaign as lack of munitions is said to have been to the Allied Powers.

Wars are matters of great moment, requiring the true patriot to cultivate a broad outlook and wide purview.  The belligerent nation, the citizens of which indulge in petty scrapping worthy of garrulous washerwomen, is handicapped in carrying on vast operations of great pith and moment.  Patriotism – true patriotism – neither gags nor blinds.  Patriotism – true patriotism – is no enemy of the truth.  If we see clearly the virtues which exist in our enemies and the vices in our friends, we are all the better equipped for carrying on such a struggle as that in which we are now engaged.  I may be denounced as unpatriotic because of what I am about to say of Russia and the Russian Government.  Some, more hysteric and unbalanced than others, will perhaps seek to pillory me as traitorous.  But loyalty to truth is the first call upon the true patriot.  To suppress all record of infamies because they are charged against the country’s friends is as disloyal to truth as would be the disseminating of false accusations against them.  What has to be said here about Russia, about an Ally of this country, must be confessed to be singularly abhorrent reading, the more abhorrent because Russia is the country’s Ally.  For my part, however, I cannot believe that a clear statement of the matter to which I feel it incumbent to draw public attention, such as will be attempted, is in the remotest sense traitorous, for it is written in loyalty to truth.  I cannot believe the British Government, allied though it be to the Government of Russia, will so deem it.  Loyalty to truth, the denunciation of infamies, even when committed by the friends and allies of this country, cannot be disloyalty to England – the fount of honor, the palladium of freedom.

Almost from the beginning of the war, stories have come to hand of Russian cruelties toward our people.  The Pope, in the course of a newspaper interview, recently rather more than hinted at them.  Reference to some that had been told to us here, were mentioned in this column a few weeks ago.  The source from which most of them that have reached this country were derived has, however, necessarily demanded extreme caution, if it has not imposed some suspicion.  It has been difficult, as was explained, to disentangle the false from the true, to measure aright what was fact and what was exaggeration.  It was difficult, too, to determine how much was more than – and in heaven’s name it was enough! – the necessities of military operations – the dire demands of the war, and how much was cruelty practiced upon our people under the guise of military necessity.  For the most part, the inclination has naturally been to give to the Russian Government as an ally of this country the benefit of the doubt, and in view of the general situation not to say a word upon such material as came to hand that would be embarrassing to an ally fighting side by side with England.  But there are limits.  And the limit is reached when silence involves traitorousness to truth.  Facts which have been detailed to the present writer by friends in whose impartiality and veracity he could have nothing but perfect confidence, are backed up and confirmed to a large extent by an official document, an Order of the Day, issued by the Russian Government.  This Order seems to have been promulgated in March last.  It decreed nothing less than the expulsion of all Jews from the military zones in Galicia, Bukovina and Poland.  The excuse for this terrible determination was an easy one to find ready to hand.  It was the alleged disloyalty of the Jewish population.  That allegation, needless to say, could have been based at most upon the treason of a few individuals.  But the Russian Government, bettering Burke, indicted a whole nation.  The decree, too, was directed not at any locality, or at any general section of the population.  It was a decree against Jews as Jews.

And now we have the result.  Some two hundred thousand Jews who had been living in the confines of Kovno, Kurland and Suwalki were exiled by the Russian authorities, so that, in the technical language employed, those districts might be “evacuated of Jews.”  Our unfortunate brethren upon whom this decree fell were compelled to obey it by a short notice, varying from eight hours to thirty at the most.  In that time two hundred thousand people had to leave their homes, their possessions, their all, and face – they knew now what!  What followed requires the pen of Dante adequately to narrate.  Not one Jewish soul of all this vast population was allowed to remain, so that towns which had contained a large proportion of Jewish inhabitants were deserted.  Aged men, little children, women – even those hourly expecting to become mothers – some clutching to their breasts their newborn babes; people insane, cripples, the blind; those who were sick unto death – there was no exemption for any.  The decree, it must be admitted, had at least the merit of impartiality.  For not only were the families of soldiers fighting at the front doomed by it, but soldiers who had received permission for furlough in their native towns, and soldiers, whose bleeding wounds were still unhealed, the Jewish nurses who attended them in the local hospitals, and even the Jewish military doctors – all had to go into exile.  Even the rage and fury of battle respects the Red Cross.  Sheltered beneath that symbol are the wounded in war, and those who are attendant upon the soldiers who have fallen.  But this decree tore away Jews whose condition entitled them to safety as if shielded by the sacred sign from the terrors of belligerency, and it sent them with their brothers and sisters into exile.  No wonder we read that the poor people were maddened unto despair; that they turned and destroyed their goods and chattels, their household goods or generations, preferring to leave behind them the ruin of their property rather than it should fall into the hands of the despoilers.

It were futile to attempt to describe with anything like competences what this horrible decree meant to the two hundred thousand poor Jews upon whom it fell.  But the Order for their expulsion was not the end by any means of the horrors which awaited them.  For the conveyance of these people from their homes to some far distant Eastern province, there were provided some twenty-six “extra trains,” as they were called.  Each of these “trains” consisted of from forty to seventy wagons into which were huddled pell-mell this population of misery.  The poor people had been able to take with them only a few of the most necessary of their possessions, and there in these “trains” they were crowded together – men, women and children of all kinds “well-to-do people and professional beggars,” as my correspondent puts it, “sound persons and infectious patients, all of them thrown together in this living load.”  None of them knew whither they were going.  With exquisite regard for the sufferings of their exiled passengers, the slow moving “trains” were not allowed to stop at stations where food could be supplied to the poor wretches.  The “trains” could stop only at a distance of at least one kilometer from any station.  But the poor stricken people who were carted away in these “trains” were perhaps not much worse off than the thousands upon thousands for whom the “trains” had no accommodation, but who had to leave none the less.  In every sort of conveyance for which, of course, extortionate prices were demanded, these people rumbled away along the roads; or footsore and weary they tramped along outside the forbidden war zone.  Like an avalanche of human misery, they came into towns already filled with populations in which poverty ruled.  Cellars, barns, outhouses – every nook and cranny was filled with this exiled population.  Even the synagogues were turned into doss-houses.  These destitutes had to beg for sheer life; they could, however, appeal only to the charity of the pauperism into which they were driven.  But above all they were forced to galling personal grief.  For in the suddenness of the exile to which they were compelled, families became separated.  Wives and their husbands, brothers and sisters, and little children were parted from their mothers.  Some were sent here, others were sent there, with regard to nothing save the capacity of the “extra trains,” or the availability of other means for conveyance all was subservient to the one idea that the war-zone districts must be evacuated of Jews.  To such an extent did this misery of missed relatives occur, that special inquiry offices had to be established at several points outside the war zones by Jews for the purpose of recovering lost persons.  What life was like upon the “extra trains” can as little be imagined as described.  In at least one case the “extra train” was not allowed by the local authorities to go into the station for which it was destined.  The consequence was that the poor people, still huddled in these wagons, were compelled to return hundreds upon hundreds of miles.  They were not allowed to remain; they went sent back to their destination!  Thus they were hunted backwards and forwards for five weeks.  Twenty-eight of the poor passengers became insane through their sufferings; typhus broke out in the “extra train”’ and death – cruel, lingering death – was the only mercy that is seemed to the harassed victims would be shown them by a fate against which they were powerless.  Let me break off for a moment here to remind the reader that this is a mere bald recitation of human suffering in Europe – it is not an imagined picture of the doomed in hell.  Nor was it suffering inflicted by an invading army upon enemies.  The victims were not belligerents.  They were civilian citizens of Russia herself – save those who were Russia’s soldiers, some bearing the wounds and the hurts of Russia’s combat.

Now, let us see what sort of disloyalty reigned in the breasts of these hunted and harassed Jews.  The boldest and bravest of men could well have been cowed into submission, into yielding up well-nigh every principle that honor, loyalty and courage demanded, after having suffered as these people had suffered.  But, notwithstanding everything, we find them possessed of a spirit which in the circumstances it would be difficult to discover among average men and women.  Listen to this!  After the “evacuation” had taken place, several Jewish organizations made urgent representations to the Russian Ministers in behalf of the expelled Jews.  Deputations of prominent Jews waited upon the ministers, and at last, after some days had elapsed and the exile had been effected, a promise was given that the whole measure was to be annulled.  To be annulled!  As if the mischief could be undone!  However, if it meant anything, it meant that the poor people could go back to their homes, back to the ruins of them that they would find, and there on their native soil begin again their hard, bitter lives.  It thus meant release from exile for them.  But the Military General Governor into whose hands the decree of annulment seems to have been placed, declared that the return of Jews to their homes could be sanctioned only on condition that they gave to the military authorities hostages from the ranks of their rabbis and the influential and better off among them.  He added that the population was to understand that, in case there was the smallest treason discovered on the part of any Jews, the hostages would be hanged.  The deputation to whom this information was conveyed in turn communicated it to the Jewish exiles.  These met together to discuss what they should do.  The conferred for three days, and then these “traitorous Jews,” these despised exiles, these men and women who had suffered every horror, who had faced every indignity, who had borne every insult and all the pains and penalties of this wicked murderous evacuation – these men and women came to this decision: that “we reject the government’s proposal because of the condition under which alone they will grant it, for it is not consistent with the dignity of Judaism!”

These then were the sort of “traitors” that the Russian Government hunted and hounded in its “evacuation”.  This was the sort of spirit that filled these people.  They were not soldiers on the battlefield in the conventional meaning of the term, but they were true soldiers on life’s battlefield, fighting an unequal contest against overwhelming odds.  And they refused their liberty, their freedom, their lives, their homes, because these could be gained only by a demeaning condition; they preferred exile to a dishonoring pact “inconsistent with the dignity of Judaism”.  One almost feels something of gratitude to the Russian Government for having been the means of showing the sort of stuff of which the people to whom they dare thus to persecute are made.  To the terrors of war we have become so inured that many will read the story of this “evacuation” of Jews from the war zone, it is difficult to believe, without a shudder, but it may be with but a passing shudder.  They will relegate it to the grim and awful catalogue of the terrors of war time.  But the information which comes from Russia shows that this wholesale baiting of Jews is likely to go on.  Already there are fears that the Jews in the other districts are likely to be deported, and meetings have been held both in Petrograd and the provinces in view of the threatened danger.  There again the fine spirit of our people has become manifested.  They have refused to purchase their liberty under any such degrading conditions as giving hostages for their good behavior.  It is said, too, that side by side with this threatened fresh exile – and this exile, recollect, means deportation for perhaps hundreds of miles – there are rumors which seems at least to have some solid basis, that from high quarters there has been issued an order for the collection of anti-Semitic material against Jewish soldiers.  We know what that means, and we know, too, that every untoward incident in which any individual Jews may become involved will be employed to the full to the hurt of Jews in general.

The sole responsibility of Russia and the Russian Government for their conduct towards Jews and other subject nationalities has been more than once contested in this column.  The influence of German anti-Semites and German anti-Semitism has been an element which could not be overlooked.  There is nothing that has occurred to shake the opinion that the root of the trouble of the Jews in Russia is to be found in Germany.  This awful narrative may be taken, therefore, as the full fruit of that country’s influence in Russia.  It will not tend to tire any who read it, of the task which this country has undertaken because it is told of one of this country’s allies.  It will, it is hoped, make men see all the clearer the necessity for ridding Russia from German influence, in the hope that thereby the conditions for our people, and others in Russia, who are subjects of the Czar, may be bettered.  Germany’s responsibility, great or small, however, does not excuse nor palliate the wickedness, the infernal, devilish wickedness of such doing as were involved in the “evacuation” of Jews in the war zones and which have here been set down.  Is the story untrue?  Then, the Russian Government has the means of denying its truth and of giving proof of its incorrectness.  If it be true, then loyalty to truth which nothing ought to depose as the highest duty, demands that the facts shall be known even though Russia is an Ally of this country.  It is as necessary as if forgive the bare suggestion – these horrors were the work of the Government of England itself.  For if the alliance between Russia and England imposes upon English citizens an obligation towards Russia, surely that same alliance imposes upon Russia a like obligation to England.  Deeds such as those narrated must be painful and disgusting to the liberty-loving Englishman.  They must prejudice the cause of the allies by influencing the opinion of neutral lands.  They must be painful and disgusting beyond words to England, which stands before the world as the protector of humanity, the shielder of the weak, the avenger of the outraged.

The obligation is, of course, upon us here in England, upon all the subjects of the King, to do nothing to shake in the least firmness of the alliance between this country and Russia.  We English Jews, not only out of loyalty to the country we love, but because we believe that the highest Jewish interests, too, lie in that direction, are anxious above all things to uphold, support and strengthen that alliance, so that England may triumph in the war she is waging.  In deference to that feeling, we have been willing, if not to forget, at least to forgive Russia’s past towards our people, to utter not a word in respect to their civil and political wrongs pending the war; to be content with the hope and the belief that the end of the war will begin the end of disabilities which they have borne.  But this loyalty to the alliance between England and Russia, this loyalty to the allies cannot be one-sided, and must not be abused by Russia.  To persecute Jews as Jews have been persecuted by the decree of “evacuation” from the war zones, to expect that this foul deed can be effected and that Jews – in England – can be dumb and utter not a word because of Anglo-Russian relations, is an abuse of the principles underlying the alliance.  It cannot be an element in any alliance into which a freedom-loving country such as England would enter.

Thus perhaps after all, the gravest charges against her involved in this “evacuation” crime is that Russia by her acts against our people has herself been disloyal to the Triple Alliance.  Writing as I do in England as an English born citizen of this beloved country, the aspect of the matter naturally appeals to me as it affects England only.  Yet let us not forget that the third element in the Triple Alliance is the fair country of France wedded to the high ideal of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.  Her sons, like England’s, are bleeding upon the battlefield in defense of these high ideals which England and France hold in common.  While they are dying for the undying cause of those ideals Russia, by her treatment of her Jewish subjects, is trampling those ideals in the very dust.

References and Suggested Readings

Lohr, Eric, The Russian Army and the Jews: Mass Deportation, Hostages, and Violence during World War I, Russian Review, V 60 N 3, July, 2001, pp. 404-419 (JSTOR)

1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, Lists the following references, in Dr. Semion Goldin’s* essay, “Antisemitism and Pogroms in the Military (Russian Empire)“:

Anonymous: Iz chernoi knigi russkogo evreistva. Materialy dlia istorii voiny 1914 – 1915 godov (From the black book of the Russian Jewry.  Materials for the history of war 1914-1915), in: Evreiskaia starina 10, 1918, pp. 195-296

Gessen, I.V. (ed.): Dokumenty o presledovaniach evreev (Documents on persecutions of the Jews), in: Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii XIX, 1928, pp. 245-284

Holquist, Peter: The role of personality in the first (1914-1915) Russian occupation of Galicia and Bukovina, in: Dekel-Chen, Jonathan L. (ed.): Anti-Jewish Violence. Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, Bloomington 2010: Indiana University Press, pp. 52-73

Lowe, Heinz-Dietrich: The Tsars and the Jews. Reform, Reaction, and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia, 1772-1917, Chur 1992: Harwood Academic Publishers

Sanborn, Joshua A.: The Genesis of Russian Warlordism. Violence and Governance during the First World War and the Civil War, in: Contemporary European History 19/3, 2010, pp. 195-213.

* The Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East-European Jewry, The Chais Center for Jewish Studies in Russian, The Hebrew University

Chronicles From World War One: Jewish Civilians in Russia: “The War and The Jews of Russia” – The Outlook, 1915

Through early 1915 at least four articles had appeared in two English-language Jewish periodicals (The Jewish Chronicle, and, The Jewish Exponent) concerning the ordeal of Jewish civilians situated in the eastern war zone, with the “last” of these four news items – entitled “Russian Accusations Against The Jews” – having been published in the Chronicle on April 16, 1915.  Curiously, on the same day, The Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia reprinted a lengthy news item, originally published in The Outlook, which focused on Russian Jewry from an altogether different perspective:  That of military service of the Jews of Russia, in the Army of Russia – in terms of Russian Jewry’s self-perception, and, the perception of Russian Jewry among varying levels of the country’s political and military leadership.

The article was penned by a certain George Kennan, but not that (!) George Kennan: Not “George F. Kennan”, American diplomat and historian, perhaps more well known as an “advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War” (quote from Wikipedia), who under the pseudonym “X” (though his real identity was known at the time!) penned the article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the July, 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs. 

Rather, the article was written by “George Kennan” (no middle initial), who was George F. Kennan’s cousin, twice-removed.

Born on February 16, 1845 (oddly sharing the same birthday as his cousin, albeit the latter having been born in 1904), the elder Kennan was a journalist and war correspondent, who was first (at the age of 12) employed at the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad Company, then by the Russian-American Telegraph Company, and finally in 1878, by the Associated Press.  A world traveler and war correspondent of eclectic interests, he accorded much of his intellectual and literary effort to the people, politics, and history of Russia, with a particular focus on the native peoples of Siberia, and, political conditions in Russia as a whole.  Though not an advocate of Russian autocracy (he was banned from the country in 1901), he nonetheless opposed Bolshevism and was a critic of the October Revolution.

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George Kennan in 1885 (image from his biography at Wikipedia)

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Kennan’s article opens with a quote from a speech by Deputy Naftali Markovich Fridman of the Duma of August 8, 1914, ardently proclaiming the support of Russian Jewry for the Russian war effort, and then presents various accounts of the bravery and heroism of Russian Jewish soldiers.  These are contrasted with the responses and perceptions – some changed; some not – of Russian Jews, by Russian political and military leaders, within the context of this early phase of the Great War.  A specific example is that of Cornet* Novikoff, concerning the death in battle of Hussar Meyer Lovinski (from Belaya Tserkov?), versus that of General Dumbadze, whose actions vis-a-vis Jews might be deemed, well … more than mercurial. 

In this manner, Kennan seems to suggest that, at the country’s highest levels of leadership, military and political leaders were simply taking cues or “pointers” from the Czar, and acting accordingly.  

While some of Kennan’s accounts convey a tone of measured, tentative optimism, his observations convey a deep sense of skepticism, if not pessimism, about the eventuality of full legal, political, and social acceptance of Russian Jewry by the country’s leaders.  This is exemplified in the final paragraphs of his article, which focus upon the story of Jewish military pilot Evgeniy Rostislavovich Shpitsberg…

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THE WAR AND THE JEWS OF RUSSIA
BY GEORGE KENNAN
Reprinted from The Outlook

April 16, 1915

In the historic “war session” of the Russian Duma, August 8, 1914, when the representatives of the various nationalities and political parties of Russia were given an opportunity to express their feelings with regard to the government and the war, Deputy Friedman, from the Province of Kovno, spoke in behalf of the Russian Jews as follows:

“Members of the Imperial Duma: Upon me has been conferred the high honor of giving expression at this historic moment to the feelings that inspire the Jewish people.  In the great spiritual uplift which has come to the nation the Jews fully participate, and they will go to the field of battle shoulder to shoulder with the other nationalities of the Empire.  Although we Jews have long suffered, and are still suffering from grievous civil disabilities, we feel, nevertheless, that we are Russian citizens and faithful sons of our Fatherland.  Nothing will ever alienate us from our country, nor separate us from the land to which for so many centuries we have been attached.  In defending Russia against foreign invasion we are actuated not only by a sense of duty, but by a feeling of profound devotion.  In this hour of trial and in obedience to the summons from the throne, we Russian Jews will take our stand under the Russian banner and repulse the enemy with all our strength.  The Jewish people will do their duty to the end.”  (Storms of applause and cries of “Bravo!” from the Right, the Centre, and the Left.)

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Naftali Markovich Fridman (image from Wikimedia Commons)

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Five months have passed since deputy Friedman expressed the devotion of the Russian Jews to their country and government that they would “go to the field of battle shoulder to shoulder with the other nationalities of the Empire.”  Has that devotion been shown in deeds, and has that promise been faithfully kept?

The Jews’ Magnanimity

If anything stands out clearly on the pages of recent Russian history it is the magnanimity and patriotism of the Jews.  Denied many of the rights of citizenship, forced to live in a great national ghetto, restricted in the learned professions, limited to a small quota of students in the universities and schools, crowded into cities within the Pale and expelled from cities without the Pale, insulted constantly by the reactionary press, accused of “ritual murder” in the courts, and beaten to death by pogrom rioters in the streets, the unfortunate Jews would seem to have little reason for loyalty or patriotic feeling; and yet, since the war began, they have subordinated personal resentment to a higher sense of duty, and, for the sake of “the Fatherland,” have done all that the most ardent patriots could to do support the monarch who has oppressed them and to defend the State that has discriminated against them.

Soon after the war began the Jews in Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, and many other Russian cities began to hold meetings in their synagogues to pray for the health and safety of the Czar, and for the success of the Russian armies in the field.  At the same time hundreds of young Jews in the universities and higher technical schools who were not liable to conscription volunteered for active service and were sent to the front.  Even Jews who were awaiting trial on political charges, or who were already suffering imprisonment for political offenses, offered to enlist as volunteers, and promised that, if they should still be alive at the end of the war, they would give themselves up for trial or go back to prison and serve out the unexpired term of their sentences.  “We cannot bear,” they said in their petition, “to sit idle in prison cells while our comrades are fighting for their country and ours.”  (Russkoe Bogatstvo, September 14, 1914, p. 316).

Acknowledgement of Jewish Patriotism

As the war proceeded, and the Czar began to go back and forth through Russia on his way to and from the front, Jewish delegations in all the larger towns where he stopped came to him with plates of bread and salt (the Russian emblem of hospitality and goodwill) and presented him with addresses breathing the most ardent spirit of Jewish loyalty and patriotism.  In one such address they said:

“It gives us no great happiness to know that our brothers and sons are shedding their blood for the sake of their monarch, for the honor of the country that is so dear to them, and for the cause of right and justice with which your Imperial Majesty’s name will forever be gloriously associated.  We beg you, O Gossudar, to receive this assurance of loyalty from your faithful subjects who are followers of the Mosaic Law.”

In places which the Czar did not visit or in which he did not stop, the Jews went with patriotic addresses to the highest local representatives of the Church or the State and this they did even in towns where at the hands of Church or State they had suffered most injustice.  If there be in all Russia a city where the Jews, might, naturally record the Russians with enmity and the Government with resentment, it is the city of Kishineff – the scene of the bloodiest anti-Jewish pogrom that has ever blackened the history of the Empire.  But even in Kishineff the Jews hastened to show that their consciousness of civic duty was stronger than their sense of injustice.  They could not get access to the Czar, so they went with bread, salt and assurances of loyalty to the Archbishop Platon, the local representative of the Holy Orthodox Church.  The high ecclesiastical dignitary received them with as much courtesy as could have been expected, and said, in reply to their patriotic address:

“The Jews are completely united with us and they have proved their loyalty.  I am personally aware of the fact that they have contributed large sums to the Red Cross and other organizations for the relief of our wounded.  Their devotion to the country is beyond question.”

Addresses of Loyalty

In almost every city and large town in Russia delegations of Jews have called on the civil or ecclesiastical authorities and presented addresses confirming or repeating the assurances of loyalty given on their behalf by Deputy Friedman in the Duma.

“But,” it may be said, “it is easy enough to pray in the synagogues and makes professions of loyalty in patriotic addresses.  Have the Russian Jews done anything else?”

If the Russian newspapers are to be believed, they certainly have.  A recent number of the Petrograd Retch contained an article on this subject in which the writer said:

“This fact (that the Jews have actively participated in the war) does not admit of the slightest doubt.  Not only have they made enormous pecuniary contributions, but as soldiers they have shown miraculous courage on the field of battle, and many of them have received military decorations.  Such behavior on their part, however, is not to be regarded as especially meritorious.  It is only the performance of a sacred duty to their country, and Russian Jews could not act otherwise.”

The same paper publishes also an article commenting upon the fact that in the lists of killed and wounded telegraphed from the front there are Russian names, Polish names, Tartar names, and Armenian names, but not a single name that can be recognized as Jewish.  The paper explains, however, that the absence of Jewish names is due to racial discrimination.  “Only casualties to officers are reported by telegraph, and no Jew is permitted to become an officer.  If deaths and injuries of private soldiers were telegraphed, the lists would be thickly sprinkled with Jewish names.  The Jews share in the work of the nation on the battlefield as well as at home.  Wherever national help is needed there they participate with contributions and work.”

Valor in Battle

But even racial discrimination fails to exclude Jewish names wholly from the newspapers.  They may not become officers, but the Russian generals who command them insist that they shall have crosses of honor for gallantry in action, and then their names are telegraphed and published.  The highest military decoration that is given in Russia is the Cross of St. George, which corresponds with the Iron Cross of Germany and the Victoria Cross of Great Britain.  Every few weeks a common Jewish soldier distinguishes himself so greatly that he is awarded this coveted honor, and not long ago a Jew won two of these decorations in a single week.  The latest case that has come to my attention is that of Mendel Gluckman, who received the Cross of St. George about a month ago for a whole series of daring exploits under the walls of Przemysl.  (Petrograd Retch, November 22, 1914.)

Moscow and Petrograd newspapers publish many letters from Russian officers describing the bravery of Jewish soldiers in action.

In a letter Cornet Novikof, of a Hussar regiment, writes:

“Meyer Lowinski, born in the village of White Church, died a hero’s death on the 26th of August, near the forest of Laschchova.  Disregarding a heavy fire, he rode constantly in advance, reconnoitering coolly the enemy’s dispositions.  But a bullet hurled the gallant soul from his saddle, and he died heroically for his country, his Czar, and his people.  One the following day we recovered his body and turned it over to the Jews in Lashchova, who buried it with all honors in the Jewish graveyard.  May the kingdom of heaven receive my dear Lovinski – unforgettable comrade and fellow soldier!”

Gallantry of a Jew in Action

In this last letter two things are particularly noticeable: first, the tribute of a Russian to the coolness and gallantry of a Jew in action; and, second, the affection of a Russian for a Jew in an environment of danger and death.  Cornet Novikof seems wholly to forget that the dead man was an alien and unbeliever, and evidently hopes to meet his, “dear, unforgettable comrade and fellow soldier in the kingdom of heaven.”

But it is not only Russian lieutenants and cornets who speak well of the Jew.  The Russkyia Yedomosti, of Moscow, published recently a letter from the well-known philanthropist, N.A. Shakhof, pleading for justice to the Jew, and closing with the words: “One wants to believe that better days will come for Russia’s stepson, and that he will be in future not the stepson but the real son of the Fatherland for which he is shedding his blood.”  A Russian general at the front read these lines a week or two later, and was so moved by them that he wrote an open letter to Mr. Shakhof over the signature “A General in Active Service,” in which he said:

“It is impossible to read your admirable letter – and especially the part of it that refers to the Jews – without a feeling of approval and sympathy.  The great and warm heart of the Russian people, like gold in the furnace, is only now showing its worth.  Less and less frequently are heard expressions of intolerance and hatred, and more and more apparent becomes the virtues that lie in the depths of the Russian soul.  I profoundly believe that a multitude of our people, whose consciences and Christian feelings have not been smothered by hatred, and whose common sense has not been eclipsed by prejudice, will join heartily in your hope that the Jews may soon become the real son, and not the stepson of the Fatherland for which he is shedding his blood.”

If the Russian Jew is thus regarded by generals in active service, if archbishops declare that his “devotion to the country is beyond question,” if Russian commanders in the field of recommend him for the Cross of St. George, and if his Russian leaders in battle refer to him when he is dead as their “dear son and unforgettable comrade and fellow soldier,” and hope to meet him in the “kingdom of heaven,” who are his haters and persecutors?

Recognition Expected

When Germany declared war against Russia and the so-called “alien” nationalities of the Empire united with the “true Russians” in support of the Czar and his Government, it was confidently believed by everybody that the Jews in particular would receive some reward for their loyalty, or at least some recognition of their patriotic devotion to the State.  It did not seem reasonable to suppose that when they contributed liberally to war funds, volunteered for military service, prayed for the Czar in their synagogues, and fought for him in the field, that they would not be relieved from some of their disabilities, even if they were not granted all the rights of Russian citizenship.

This general belief that something would be done for the Jews was strengthened by the change in the Czar’s attitude toward the Poles.  They, too, had been persecuted and oppressed, but to them was given the promise of a brighter future.  To the Poles the Grand Duke Nicholas said:

“The hour has come for the realization of your fathers’ and your grandfathers’ dreams.  Russia meets you with an open heart and with the outstretched hand of a brother.  Under the sceptre of the Russian Czar, Poland, with freedom of religion, language, and local administration, shall be reborn.”

General Dumbadze, in whose province the Czar’s Crimean winter palace is situated, has always been a fanatical Jew hater, and had banished from the territory under his jurisdiction even the Jewish soldiers of a Russian regiment stationed there.  When, however, it seemed likely that the Czar would show the Jews favor, General Dumbadze immediately changed front, and not only attended services in the synagogue of Alshta, where he happened at the time to be, but assured the Jews that “he desired their happiness; that he hoped they would come to him with all their needs, and that he would try hard to meet them halfway.”

A Change of Front

Advocate Shmakof, who was one of the most bitter and unrelenting prosecutors of the Jew Beilis in the Kieff “ritual murder” trial, soon followed General Dumbadze’s example, and declared that racial hatred and the persecution of aliens in Russia were “things of the past.”

General Rennenkampf, before he went to the front, attended services in a Jewish synagogue, and even such representatives of the “Black Hundreds” as Purishkevitch, Orlof and Markof deprecated the further continuance of racial discord, and declared that all parties and nationalities should “get together and shake hands.”

It soon became apparent, however, that these advocates of peace and goodwill had turned their coats too hastily.  Thinking that the Czar must necessarily show some favor to the nationality that had given him such rounds of loyalty and patriotism, they quickly adjusted themselves to the expected change in his Jewish policy.  When Jews began to come to him with symbols of goodwill and assurances of loyalty, as they did in Petrograd, Grodno, Lublin, and other Russian towns, he might very naturally have said to them:

“The storm of war is causing more suffering to you than to Russians generally because most of your people live near the German frontier.  Poland and the Western provinces of the Pale are now the scene of conflict, and tens of thousands of Jews are being driven, in desperate condition, from their homes.  In view of this fact and of the patriotic loyalty that you have shown, I shall devote particular attention to your needs, and shall change or modify as far as possible the laws and administrative regulations that bear most heavily upon your race.”

The significance of the coldness and reticence with which the Czar received the Jewish delegations was first noticed by such monarchical and nationalistic journals as the Russian Zemstchina.  Taking his attitude as a guide – or, as we should colloquially say, a “pointer”, these papers soon resumed the anti-Jewish agitation which they had temporarily suspended.  Then all the bureaucratic officials, from the Minister of Public Instruction and the provincial Governors to the chiefs of police and the censors, took their cue from the monarchical press and “the spheres,” and proceeded to enforce the laws relating to the Jews with even more than ante-bellum strictness and severity.  Take for example, the field of education.

Vacancies in the Universities

Inasmuch as many young Russian students volunteered for military service, leaving vacancies in the universities, it might reasonably be supposed that the government would allow these vacancies to be filled, at least in exceptional years, by Jewish applicants for admission, even though the Jewish quota (three per cent) might already be full.  The Minister of Public Instruction, however, would not listen to such a suggestion.  In the early part of October, 1914, the Governing Council of the Petrograd University asked the minister to sanction the admission to that institution of twenty-five young Jews, who had been graduated with gold medals from the gymnasia of Petrograd and Wilna, but who had failed to get into the University for the reason that they had not drawn lucky numbers in the admissions lottery.  The petition was not denied on the ground that the Czar, in 1908, ordered strict observance of the rules relating to the admission of Jews.  The Council then asked the Minister to sanction the admission of eighteen fully qualified Russian Jews who had been forced out of German and Austrian universities by the war.  This petition was also denied and for the same reason.

In November the City Council of Marianpol begged the Minister of Public Instruction to allow the children of Jewish soldiers who had gone to the war to enter the Marianpol public schools.  The petition was denied, as were many more from other Russian towns.

Back to the Pale!

In almost every other field of Russian social life the treatment of the Jews since the war began has been equally harsh, cruel and barbarous.  Late in November, 1914, the Minister of Justice, M. Shcheglovitch, refused to confirm the election of twenty-four Jewish lawyers as members of the Petrograd Bar Association.  They were duly qualified and the association wanted them; but the Minister vetoed their election on racial and religious grounds.

If Jews are worthy of acceptance as soldiers, their sisters would seem to be worthy of acceptance as hospital nurses; but Governors of provinces and officials of the Red Cross do not allow them to serve, even when they have been chosen by the Union of Russian Zemtsvos for its own war hospitals.  But admittance to some of these hospitals is denied even to wounded Jewish solders brought back from the front.  Drs. Kucherof and Pustnykof refused to take them into the hospital at Taganrog, and a protest against such actions was made to the Medical Society of the Don.

The regulations of the Government with regard to residence outside of the Pale of Settlement are enforced against the Jews now almost as strictly as they were a year ago.  From Petrograd, Kursk and many other Russian towns Jews are being expelled just as they were in 1913.  The civil authorities of late years have been giving to certain privileged Jews permits to reside anywhere in the Empire, but have not included in such permits personal descriptions of the bearers.  The lack of such descriptions – for which the authorities themselves are responsible – is now made the ground for sending such Jews back to the Pale of Settlement.  The fact that the Pale has been ravaged and desolated by war makes no difference.  If a Jew belongs in the Pale, to the Pale he must go, no matter whether he can live and support himself there or not.

“Is This Just?”

In July, 1914, a young Russian Jew was studying electrical engineering in Switzerland.  When the war broke out it was not easy for him to get back to Russia, so he went to Paris, enlisted in the French army, and was assigned to the electrical corps in the field.  A month or six weeks later, he was so severely wounded as to be incapacitated for further duty.  When he was discharged from the hospital the French authorities, in recognition of his meritorious service, gave him four hundred francs for his traveling expenses, and he returned by way of Sweden and Finland, to Russia.  As soon as he reached Petrograd he was ordered out of the city because, as a Jew, he had no right of residence there.  He showed his wounds, explained that he had been fighting with the French, and was finally allowed to remain two weeks.  At the end of that term he went to the authorities and asked for the traveling expense allowance which was made at that time to destitute Russian refugees driven out of Germany and Austria by the war.  The authorities informed him that his application was too late; it should have been made as soon as he arrived.  He had been living in Petrograd two weeks, and, as he had thus become a resident, he must get back to the Pale of Settlement, where he belonged, as best he could.  Whether he ever did get back or not I don’t know.  This is all of his story that was given in the Novoe Vremya.  Even that anti-Semitic journal was shocked by it, and published it under the headline “Is This Just?”

I have space only for one more illustration of the Czar’s attitude towards loyal Jews who have prayed for him, fought for him and died for him.

On the 19th of last October, the Petrograd Retch published the following obituary notice showing censor’s excisions:

“News has reached Petrograd that the young (censor’s excision) Eugene R. Shpitzberg has perished in the field of military operations.  The deceased was twenty-four years of age.  He was born in one of the towns of the Baltic provinces, and after his graduation from one of the privileged schools in Petrograd he went to France.”

(Censor’s excision.)

“Toward the end of April, this year, E.R. Shpitzberg returned to Petrograd.”

(Censor’s excision.)

“Afterwards the deceased visited Riga and other towns in the Baltic provinces.”

(Censor’s excision.)

“About the middle of July, E.R. Shpitzberg made preparations to go to the United States of America.”

(Censor’s excision.)

“Perished in the Field of Operations”

I regret my inability to fill all of the blanks in this extraordinary obituary notice; but I can partly fill some of them.  Eugene Shpitzberg, as his name shows, was a Jew.  Finding it impossible to get higher education at home, on account of the university regulations and Mr. Kasso’s lottery admission device, he went to Paris.  There he became interested in aviation and learned to fly.  In April last he returned to Russia, and visited his birthplace, in one of the Baltic provinces.  His conduct in Petrograd and at home was evidently regarded with disapproval by the censor, but why I do not know.  Perhaps he saved somebody’s life in the Baltic provinces, and was given a reception by the Petrograd Aviation Society.  Such incidents would be creditable to a Jew, and of course the censor would cut them out.  In July he decided to go to the United States of America – for the reason, perhaps, that we have no Czar here to regulate Jews.  Before he could carry this intention into effect, however, the war broke out and he volunteered for military service.  The censor would not allow the Retch to explain just how he “perished in the field of military operations”, but I happen to know, from another source, that he was killed in an aeroplane while making a military reconnaissance near Sandomir, on the frontier of Austria (“Annals of the War” Petrograd, No. 10, November 7, 1914).  The censor of the Retch would not permit this fact to be stated.

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Pilot Evgeniy Rostislavovich Shpitsberg (Летчик Евгений Ростиславович Шпицберг) (image from RU.Wikipedia)

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What kind of a heart can it be that excludes wounded Jewish soldiers from hospitals; rejects the services of Jewish nurses and sister of mercy; drives into the Pale disabled Jews who have been fighting for Russia in France; excludes from the public schools the children of army surgeons who wear two crosses of honor for gallantry on the field of battle; and finally denies to a dead Jewish aviator even the poor boon of a friendly death notice in the newspaper of the country for which he has given his life?

The oligarchy that governs Russia would like to have the world believe that the ill treatment of the Jews in that country is due to invincible popular prejudice and hatred.  But it is not the people who are to blame.

So far as the Czar is concerned, he has received from the Russian Jews, since the war began, as loyal and faithful service as any ruler could desire.

References and Suggested Readings

Hofmeister, Alexis, “A war of letters – What do we read in soldiers’ Letters of Russian Jews from the Great War?” (“Une guerre de lettres. Que disent les lettres de soldats juifs de Russie écrites pendant la Grande Guerre?”), Revue des études slaves, LXXXVII-2, 2016

George Kennan, biography at Wikipedia

Evgeniy Rostislavovich Shpitsberg, biography at Ru.Wikipedia

*Cornet: A Rank in cavalry equal to that of a Second Lieutenant. 

Chronicles From World War One: Jewish Civilians in Poland: “The Tragedy of Israel in Poland” – The New York Sun, February 14, 1915

While the prior post – about the war’s effects on Jewish civilians in Eastern during the first year of the Great War – is comprised of three relatively brief news items, the article forming this post, “The Tragedy of Israel in Poland,” published during the same time period and covering the same topic, is quite different.

Penned by journalist, writer, and diplomat Herman Bernstein (who served as United States’ Ambassador to Albania, and founded the Yiddish daily Der Tog (“The Day”), the article covers and illustrates the experiences of Polish Jewry early in the war in depth and detail, through writing compelled by a deep sense of moral urgency.  First published in The New York Sun, it was reprinted four days later (on February 19, 1915) in The Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia.

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Herman Bernstein in 1918 (photo from his biographical profile at Wikipedia)

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The article, as it appeared in the Exponent, is illustrated below. 

A verbatim transcript follows.

With its opening paragraphs providing a general overview of Jewish life in pre-war Poland, the article briefly touches upon Jewish military service in the Russian Army, and then focuses on the social and political impact upon Polish Jewry of the manifesto of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (commander in chief of Russian Army units on the main war front until August 21, 1915, at which time Czar Nicholas II took command of Russian military forces).  The Grand Duke’s manifesto offered political autonomy to Poland under the condition of that country’s loyalty to Russia, and, “respect[ing] the right of those nationalities with which history has bound you.” 

As recounted by Bernstein through the lengthy remainder of his article, the implications and ultimate effects of this latter passage upon Polish Jewry – after an initial burst of optimism and gratitude – were tragic. 

By way of illustration, he presents accounts of the experiences of Polish Jews from the towns of Tarnobrzeg (in southeastern Poland) and Skierniewice (“Skiernievice”; in central Poland, midway between Lodz and Warsaw).  Given the power and detail of Bernstein’s prose, there is no need to recapitulate this part of his essay, suffice to note the use of the word “Beiilis” – an allusion to Menahem Mendel Beilis – as a term of contempt hurled by Russian soldiers at Jewish civilians exiled from Skierniewice.  

Anyway…  This post refers to military service of Jewish soldiers only tangentially, at best.  However, in the context of history (and not solely the history of the First World War), if Bernstein’s article is an ironic counterpart to that topic, it is also a necessary one.

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The worst part of our experience was, however, that all along the way we were continually joined by ever new hosts of Jews who were even more desperate than we.  The livelong day we dragged ourselves along the hard, rutty roads.  Beside us moved long lines of Russian soldiers.  They were coming to “redeem” the land from the hands of the enemy and it was these redeemers who inflicted upon us the most excruciating woes.  Wherever the Russian troops went they were accompanied by a crowd of Poles, men and women and children, who would point at us and shout:

“There they go, the Beilises!  There go the traitors!”

“Beilises!” the incited Russian soldiers would cry as we passed before them.  Those of us who happened to come near enough even felt their blows.  Perhaps the Russians were not to blame.  They believed what the Poles told them.

“To Sakhalien!  To Sakhalien!  Go to Palestine, you accursed Jews!” the Poles and the soldiers would taunt us.  What could we answer?

Often we noticed among the soldiers familiar faces.  There were Jewish soldiers from Poland and Russia.  We would stretch out our hands to them and cry:

“See, brethren, what the Russians are doing to us!  You are on your way to defend the fatherland and here they are torturing us!  Save us!”

The Jewish soldiers would bow their heads.  Many an eye would fill with tears.

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The Tragedy of Israel in Poland
By Herman Bernstein
The Jewish Exponent

February 19, 1915
[Reprinted From The New York Sun of February 14, 1915]

Picture the sorrow, the martyrdom and the sufferings of the Russian Jew in the Pale of Jewish Settlement, with pogroms, with expulsions, with poverty – his ambition throttled, his craving for education stifled, his opportunities for work and trade blocked.  Then picture the sorrows of the Belgian, attacked, ruined, homeless, starving, with widows and orphans on all sides.  Take away from the Belgian his fatherland, his hope for regeneration and for justice, the sympathy of the world, and the relief sent by generous humanity – and you will have a faint idea of the sorrow and sufferings of the Polish Jew today.

Upward of three million of Polish Jews are staving, homeless, driven from place to place by the armies that are fighting Russia and by armies that are fighting for Russia; boycotted, humiliated, slandered by the Poles, accused of the vilest crimes, of disloyalty, of espionage and treachery – all for the purpose of discrediting them so as to rob them even of the hope of freedom and justice in the future.

For several years before the outbreak of the European war, the Jews of Poland suffered as no oppressed people have ever suffered anywhere else on the face of the earth.  In addition to the general disabilities and the restrictive laws which placed them beyond the pale of human rights, they were mercilessly hounded and tortured by the Poles.  The Polish people, who were themselves struggling for liberty, ever hopeful to re-establish Poland as a nation, reorganized, rejuvenated and regenerated, conducted a cunningly devised and cruelly executed campaign of economic boycott against the Jews within the Polish provinces.

The anti-Jewish boycott in its acute form grew out of political disappointment, and the vengeance the Poles wreaked upon the Jews was diabolical.  The liberal Polish leaders of yesterday became the most rabid, heartless Jew baiters.  Orders were issued through the press to boycott the Jews throughout Poland.  Poles were warned against buying anything from Jews.  Polish physicians refused to render medical aid to Jews.  Polish druggists refused to sell medicine to the Jewish sick.  Polish hospitals refused to admit Jewish patients, however critical their condition, and there are records of Jewish families slain, burned to death, as in the time of the Inquisition; of Jewish homes destroyed, of Jewish shops plundered.

The pogrom policy, abandoned by the Russian government, was taken up in another form by the Poles.  Through various machinations and provocations they tortured the Jewish people within their provinces, ruined them, often putting them to death upon one pretext or another.

When the war broke out the Jews of Russia were carried away by a passionate loyalty to Russia that, to the outsider, seemed more than strange.  They enlisted as volunteers in large numbers, they established hospitals, they gave large sums of money for the wounded soldiers, they fought and died for Russia, where it had been so hard for them to live.

Among the first heroes of the Russian troops the Jews furnished a conspicuously large number.  The Jewish heroes distinguished themselves buy their courage and devotion, and even the eyes of the Russian reactionaries seemed to have been opened.  The Jew baiters suddenly realized their blundering narrowness and sickly prejudice.

Those who but a short time before had sought to brand the Jews as ritual murderers suddenly repented.  Purishkevitch, the Black Hundred leader in the Duma, kissed the scroll of the Torah, and Shmakoff, another anti-Semite, embraced and kissed Jews in public to demonstrate that there were no longer any differences among the nationalities constituting the population of the Russian empire.

For a time it seemed as though the Polish Jewish animosities would also be swept aside by the awful catastrophe that had suddenly turned almost all of Europe into a madhouse.  Then came the famous manifesto, issued by the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolayevitch, in command of the Russian armies, promising autonomy to Poland on condition that the people would be loyal to Russia in the war.  The Jews, who had been tyrannized, humiliated and almost crushed through the Polish boycott, nevertheless hailed Poland’s freedom in a spirit of genuine joy.  The Jews, who, have always loved liberty, know how to prize liberty, and they rejoiced even when their oppressors were promised liberty.  They hoped that this promise to the Poles, the approaching realization of their dreams of a reunited Poland, would soften the hearts of the Poles and end their militant and tyrannical policy of Jew hatred.

The Jewish press in the Polish provinces welcomed the Polish manifesto with almost hysterical enthusiasm.  One of the most widely circulated Jewish dailies in Warsaw aid editorially:

“The Jewish population of Poland welcomes the manifesto with no less enthusiasm than the Poles themselves.  During the past centuries the fate of the Jews has been bound up with the fate of the Poles.  The Jews have participated in the sorrows as well as the joys of the Polish people.  In the great moments of Polish history the Polish leaders did not forget the devotion of the Jewish people to Poland.  We believe that when the sun of freedom will rise in the sky of Poland all misunderstandings and differences will be forgotten forever.”

Another Jewish daily declared:

“The joy of the Polish people is great.  We Jews are rejoicing in their joy and we are also deeply grateful to the Russian commander in chief because in his manifesto to the Poles he did not forget to mention the other nationalities whose fate is bound up with that of the Poles.”

Still another Jewish daily said:

“The news about the regeneration of the Polish people calls out a feeling of real gratification knowing the Jews, who themselves realize all the tragedy of being scattered among the nations.  It is, of course, to be expected that, in accordance with the manifesto, the Poles will respect the rights of the other nationalities within their provinces.”

The Polish press, however, overlooked the following passage contained in the manifesto issued by the Russian commander in chief:

“There is but one thing that Russia expects of you – that you respect the right of those nationalities with which history has bound you.”

Russia struck the keynote of unity in this manifesto, but the Poles, instead of abandoning their anti-Jewish campaign, intensified their cunningly devised plots against the Jewish people within their provinces.

It seemed as though the manifesto which stipulated that the Poles respect the other nationalities in Poland added oil to the flames of hatred.  They who had systematically hounded the Jews during the past few years tried to justify their anti-Semitic activities on the eve of their own liberation.

One of the leading Polish newspapers commenced the new campaign by publishing an article declaring that the Poles could not be expected to respect the rights of the Jews because in all Russian official documents the Jews are spoken of as “aliens” and not as a nationality.

When the Germans invaded a portion of Russian Poland a new plot was formed against the Jews by the Poles.  The leaders sent out word throughout the Polish provinces to lay the blame upon the Jews for anything that might compromise the Poles in the eyes of the Russians or the Germans.

“Blame the Jew.”  This order, spread by the Polish leaders, was intended to serve two purposes.  The Jews were to be compromised and discredited so that the Poles would not have to respect their rights when Poland became autonomous.  In the second place their own disloyalty would be rendered less conspicuous.

The Poles circulated rumors throughout the Polish provinces that the Jews were spies, that the Jews were poisoning the wells to kill the Russian troops, were giving signals to the German troops, were throwing bombs from German Zeppelins and other equally absurd stories.  The Polish newspapers helped to circulate these legends among the Polish peasantry.  These rumors also reached the Russian army and spread like wildfire to Russian towns and villages.

The Polish newspapers published, and foreign papers reproduced a story to the effect that Polish Jews had carted to the Germans a million and a half rubles in gold in a coffin, and however ridiculous the story may sound, the people believed it and the Poles intensified their attacks upon the Jews.  Naturally all this had its effect upon the Russian army and was the cause of numerous catastrophes, of numerous pogroms.  Hundreds of Jews were hanged on account of such false accusations.  The ground was prepared, the Poles knew how to reach the authorities with their accusations, and the word of one informer was sufficient for the officials to hang a Jew. 

Many circumstances helped the Poles in their campaign against the Jews.  The similarity between the Yiddish and the German languages, the peculiar clothes worn by the Polish Jews, their isolation in ghettos, their unfamiliarity with the Russian language, which made it impossible for them to defend themselves by clearing up many misunderstandings; the fact that they were not permitted to serve on any committees that represented the local population to the authorities – all these created an unfavorable state of affairs for the Jews at the time of the German invasion of Russian Poland.

As soon as the Germans entered a Russian town the Poles changed their tactics.  Having previously barred the Jews from various committees, they now urged them to form such committees in order to place responsibility upon the Jews.  Thus the Jews were expected to secure provisions and supplies for the invading troops.  The Jews were compelled to do this, and when the Russian troops returned they made charges against the Jews to the Russian officials.

The returning Russian troops were usually met by the Polish rabble, who related to them all kinds of stories about Jewish espionage and treachery.  Very often the soldiers and Cossacks started at once for the Jewish quarter and broke into Jewish houses, looking for Germans supposed to have hidden there.  Since their search proved unsuccessful the infuriated Russian soldiers robbed Jewish homes and shops at the instigation of the Poles.  The Poles spurred on the hungry Russian soldiers by telling them that while the Jews gladly gave bread to the German troops, they refused to help the Russians.

Upon just such information given to the Russian troops by Polish informers the sons-in-law of the well known rabbi of Radom were hanged.  A large number of Jews were hanged because they had been accused by the Poles of having refused to exchange money for Russian soldiers.

When the Russian troops entered the city of Warsaw and the population came out to welcome them and give them bread and tea, the Poles shouted to the soldiers not to accept anything from the Jews.

“Beware!” they cried.  “They want to poison you.  Their bread and tea are poisoned.”

It was a critical moment and it looked as though a terrible pogrom would break out.  Fortunately a tragedy was averted on that occasion.

In Grayevo, the Poles led the German troops to the Jewish quarter and pointed out to them the houses to be robbed, and later they told the Russians that the Jews were on most friendly terms with the German troops, assisting them in every way possible.

Among the accounts of the tragedies enacted in the Polish provinces and of the sorrows of the Jewish people there, I have received numerous documents in the form of letters from eye witnesses of the pogroms and expulsions, also descriptions by writers who have visited the scenes of a tragedy even more painful that the tragedy of Belgium.  The following extracts from a letter received recently in New York from Austrian Poland contains the simple, heartrending account of the horrors of a massacre near Tarnobrzeg:

“And now, my dear son, I will tell you what happened to your father and your mother.  On Thursday about one hundred Jews, women and children among them, were placed on the sidewalk.  The Russian soldiers aimed their guns at us.  Our cries went up to Heaven.  We were saying our last prayers.  Then God had pity on us, and only Isaac Treger’s son, the youngest, was shot.

“After that the soldiers picked out six young men, stripped them and flogged them mercilessly until blood commenced to gush from their bodies.  Then they took the ten oldest men of our town and imprisoned them in a cellar in Vimishlin, where they were kept for forty-eight hours.

“You may bless the Lord for having permitted me to survive.  I am glad that my life was spared because I was enabled to bury the dead in accordance with the Jewish law.  If I were not here, your grandfather, Hershel, and the others from Mokshoiv would have remained in Byela Gura in the woods.  They were hanged there and they remained hanging in the woods for four days.  Then they were all buried in one grave, one on top of the other.  I learned of this a day after the hanging.

“Yochevedel returned.  She had hidden herself somewhere.  I went to the Count and begged him to allow me to bury the dead in the Jewish cemetery.  But the Russians would not allow me to do that.  Three weeks later our troops returned to this town.  I went to the authorities and begged them to permit me to bury the dead.  I was fortunate enough to have gone there in time, otherwise they would have remained in the woods forever.

“I had asked grandfather to come along with us, but he said it was a pity to leave our house upon which we had worked so hard.  When we heard the sound of cannonading we ran to Maidan. ***

“In Maidan we waited for father, but he did not come.  We could not get anything to eat there, for all the people of Maidan had already fled.

“We got some bread from the soldiers.  On the third day we ran into Kolbushov.  On the way we met Moses Bartsen and his family.  When we reached Kolbushov on the following day we did not find any one there.  Most of the Jews had all run away on Friday.  I did not know what to do.  Mother was unable to go any further.  So we remained in Kolbushov for ten days.  The Russians arrived there on Saturday at three o’clock.

“On Sunday night, that was the Jewish New Year, they slaughtered three Jews – father and son and the son’s father-in-law.  You can imagine our feelings.  What could we do?  We were not permitted to leave town.  We hid the girls under the beds, and every ten minutes another Cossack would come into the house demanding food, money and our watches.  But we had nothing to eat ourselves.  Yet they did not believe that we were telling them the truth.  Thank God that we were left among the living.”

Among the letters I have received from responsible and reliable people who have visited the scenes of the Jewish Belgium, Poland, the following vivid description of the Jewish exile from Skiernievice stands out prominently. 

“I met one of the Jewish militiamen from ill fated Skiernievice at one of the many Warsaw shelters for homeless Jews, a pale, worn young man, half laborer and half “intellectual”.  His terrible experiences had left an indelible impression upon him.  He seemed to have lost all sense of fear, so anxious was he to rush into the street and proclaim to every passerby the tragedy he had just witnessed.

“The shelter was overflowing with human beings; women, children and the aged and feeble.  The grown men were scouring the city all day to secure some means to rebuild their shattered homes.  The air was so close one could scarcely breathe.  But who in this vale of Jewish tears thought of such needs as fresh air?

“So the Jewish militiaman and I found a seat on a hard, black bench near the window.  He began to tell me the story of the exile of the Jews from Skiernievice, and as I listened I recalled the horrible tales of Chmeinitzky’s hordes, tales which had hitherto sounded incredible.

“He spoke in a low tone that betrayed his suppressed excitement.

“ ‘We organized a volunteer militia,” he told me.  “When the Russian troops and officials abandoned Skiernievice, we felt that we were left among savage beasts who might crush us at any moment in a pogrom.  We went to the Citizens’ Committee, which was made up exclusively of Poles, and petitioned that the Jews be allowed to enter the militia, but the Poles refused to let us join them.  We therefore organized a militia of our own, which aside from its other duties had to protect the Jews from the Polish militia.

“ ‘Meanwhile the Germans entered the town.  We had heard plenty of stories of the Poles carrying false accusations to the Russian officials against the Jews, so we were afraid to go out to meet the Germans.  The Poles went alone and told the Germans that we, the Jews, were the only friends of the Russia in the village.  Yet the Germans did not molest us.  They paid for everything they took either in cash or orders.

“ ‘A member of the German landstrum gathered a crowd and said: “We are waging war only against the Russian soldiers and not against the peaceful inhabitants.  We shall not trouble you if you do not interfere with us.  On the contrary we bring you liberty.

“ ‘When we asked him to explain the conduct of the Germans at Kaliscz he replied that the Germans must have been given some provocation.  But at that moment we were not interested so much in gaining liberty as in keeping body and soul together.

“ ‘One day the Germans were looking for a stable for their horses.  Our Polish friends pointed out the Jewish synagogue as suitable for the purpose.  Without further search the Germans installed their horses in the sanctuary.

“ ‘The Jews were shocked, for up to that time the Germans had behaved creditably.  The rabbi and a few Jewish laymen sought the German commander and begged him to spare the synagogue.  He received them cordially but rebuked them for not being as friendly as the Poles.  When they asked him to have the horses removed from the synagogue he showed considerable surprise.  He had not known that the building was a synagogue.  He gave the order at once to his soldiers.  They removed the horses, and furthermore, scoured the place so thoroughly, that they left it cleaner that it had ever been before.  You know the condition of our synagogues in the small towns?’

“ ‘And how did it all end?  I interrupted at this point.

“ ‘We paid dearly,” resumed the militiaman, ‘for this German good-will.  A few days before the Hebrew New Year the Russians compelled the Germans to evacuate.  We awaited with dread the return of the Russian troops, for we had heard too often of the bitter experiences of the Jews in other towns under such circumstances.  The Poles threatened to wreak vengeance upon us when the Russians would arrive.

“ ‘And so they did.  The reality was even worse than our greatest fears.

“ ‘On the eve of New Year the Russians returned.  The Poles met them far out on the road and maliciously accused the Jews of having aided the Germans.  As a result, the Russians entered the town hostile towards us.

“ ‘The Russian commander had a talk with several prominent Poles and immediately decided to Punish the Jews severely.  At noon an officer with a huge drum appeared in the market place and proclaimed that the Jews must prepare to leave the town the next morning at 11 o’clock.

“ ‘We were thunderstruck.  Where could we go?  What could we do?

“ ‘The Russian officer added that no Jew could remain in Skiernievice because we were all under suspicion, and that any Jew who lingered would be shot as a spy.

“ ‘We hastened to the Russian commander and begged him to spare us.  We produced evidence showing that we had been libeled.  But in vain.  He persisted that he could not investigate our claims because the commander of the Russian army in that vicinity, General Sheideman, had given him his orders.

“ ‘It was rumored about town that when General Sheideman had been in Skiernievice some time before he called the representatives of the citizens’ committee and demanded of them a guarantee that the inhabitants would be loyal to the Russians.  As the representatives were all Poles, they gave the general a list of persons under suspicion, which included all the Jews in the village.

“ ‘When we saw that our efforts were useless we decided to leave our possessions and merely try to save our lives.  The incidents of that night beggar description.  We were not even permitted to leave behind us the sick and the women in childbirth.  Only the Jewish bakers, blacksmiths and a few contractors were allowed to remain.  But they did not care to stay and prepared to leave with the rest of us.

“ ‘The order of the commander stated that the Jews must depart along the right bank of the Vistula.

“ ‘At 11 o’clock on New Year’s Day, some 7,000 Jews gathered in the market place, carrying their children and the sick.  In half an hour our number was increased by another thousand Jews who had been driven from the neighboring villages.

“ ‘The Poles did not even wait for the Jews to leave town before they started plundering our homes and shops.  They met with no resistance.  We, the Jewish militiamen, surrounded our community in order to defend our lives and the honor of our women.  I cannot describe our feelings.  We were so enraged that if we had had access to bombs then, we would have annihilated ourselves and all Skiernievice.

“ ‘It was the Sabbath, but the rabbi declared it was lawful to let the children, the feeble old men and the women in childbirth on wagons, which we hired at unheard of prices.

“ ‘We took the scrolls of the law in our hands and, amid the savage cries of the Poles and the soldiers, we left the town in silence and despair.  Our hearts were heavy.  Even the children cried with us.

“ ‘Just then a fine looking Jew with gray hair and a jet black beard, took a seat on our bench.  My companion hesitated.

“ ‘Does he embarrass you?’ I asked the militiaman.  ‘If so we might move to another corner.’

“ ‘No,’ the young man answered sadly.  ‘He cannot disturb us.’

“ ‘I gazed intently at the newcomer and I shuddered.  He was looking straight into our eyes, but I felt his glance pass through me to some invisible goal.

“ ‘He is out of his senses,’ the militiaman explained to me in a low voice.

“The gray headed Jew began to rock himself back and forth, repeating in a low murmer:

“ ‘Beilis!  Beilis!’

“ ‘He is one of the victims, the militiaman said sadly.  ‘That’s the way he’s been acting since we arrived here.  He ought to be put in an institution, but where can we find such a place now?  So he is here with us, with the sane.  He does not trouble any one.  He is very quiet.

“The militiaman continued his story.

“ ‘We directed our steps toward Warsaw, some eighty versts distant.  We had to carry the invalids and the children during the entire journey.  But we had become hardened to suffering of late and night have borne all with a certain amount of resignation.

“ ‘The worst part of our experience was, however, that all along the way we were continually joined by ever new hosts of Jews who were even more desperate than we.  The livelong day we dragged ourselves along the hard, rutty roads.  Beside us moved long lines of Russian soldiers.  They were coming to “redeem” the land from the hands of the enemy and it was these redeemers who inflicted upon us the most excruciating woes.  Wherever the Russian troops went they were accompanied by a crowd of Poles, men and women and children, who would point at us and shout:

“There they go, the Beilises!  There go the traitors!”

“ ‘ “Beilises!” the incited Russian soldiers would cry as we passed before them.  Those of us who happened to come near enough even felt their blows.  Perhaps the Russians were not to blame.  They believed what the Poles told them.

“ ‘ “To Sakhalien!  To Sakhalien!  Go to Palestine, you accursed Jews!” the Poles and the soldiers would taunt us.  What could we answer?

Often we noticed among the soldiers familiar faces.  There were Jewish soldiers from Poland and Russia.  We would stretch out our hands to them and cry:

“ ‘ “See, brethren, what the Russians are doing to us!  You are on your way to defend the fatherland and here they are torturing us!  Save us!”

“ ‘The Jewish soldiers would bow their heads.  Many an eye would fill with tears.

“ ‘We expected to be banished to Siberia or to Sakhalien, so we trudged along to Warsaw without a spark of hope in our hearts.  Toward evening we reached a small Jewish town.  The local Jews had heard of our misfortune and they came out to meet us.  But before long an official mandate arrived ordering that we should not be allowed to spend the night in the town or even to pass through the streets.  The Russians began at once to drive out those of us who had set foot in the town.  Behind us the others were pressing forward, not knowing what had happened at the van.  Sobs and moans filled the air.  Men and women grew hysterical.  In the tumult a child was choked to death.  We were herded together like a flock of sheep and forced to spend the night in the open fields.

“ ‘We begged piteously that a few of us should be allowed to enter the town and buy bread and wood, but our prayers were vain.  The officers threatened to shoot any Jews who would enter the town.  Some of us drew near to talk with the local Jews, only to be driven back with brutal blows.

“ ‘In the morning we set out again on our way.  We did not try to halt at the towns we passed.  Such an attempt would have been useless and would only have embarrassed the Jews who lived there and whose own position was none too secure.

“ ‘We trudged on, hungry and exhausted.  Ever and anon the Poles would come out from the neighboring villages and heap insults upon us.  The Poles beat those of us who straggled behind from weakness.  So did the soldiers.

“ ‘I cannot find words to describe the journey.  At was a journey of shame and misery.  A few women in childbirth died on the way with their babies.  We carried the corpses along on the wagons together with the living invalids and children.  We could not bury the dead, since we were not allowed to stop anywhere.

“ ‘In this plight we reached Warsaw.  Here too the report of our misfortune had preceded us and we were met with bread, clothes and wagons.  Representatives of the Jewish community petitioned the authorities to allow us to enter the city.

“ ‘Here in Warsaw no one could understand the reason for our expulsion and every one was afraid to do anything for us.  The civil authorities could not disregard the command of the military officials that we be banished to the right side of the Vistula, the Prague side.  That locality is known as a den of thugs and the Jews of Warsaw were afraid that we would be attacked and murdered.  After urgent petition to the civil authorities, the Governor of Warsaw at last consented to overlook our entrance into the city.  We therefore remained in Warsaw where charitable Jews had established shelters for the homeless.  The rest of the story is known to you.’

“This is the tale of the ruin of Skiernievice as told by the young Jewish militiaman.  He did not tell me all and much of his story I have omitted here.  There is a great deal which it is not yet possible to describe frankly.

“The Jewish community of Warsaw helped the unfortunate exiles as far as human power could aid them.  A few weeks later when they were settled in shelters, the Government was prevailed upon to permit a Jewish deputation to visit Skiernievice and see how things were there.  A good many Jews of the village had meanwhile obtained permission to return to their pillaged homes.  They went back with the deputation.

“What they found at Skiernievice struck them with consternation.  The Poles had taken possession of the Jewish houses and did not allow their Jewish owners to enter.  They were doing business in the Jewish shops and acted as if they were the proprietors.  They scouted the idea of leaving.

“The Poles translated into reality the plan which the well known Jew baiting Polish newspaper Dwa Groshi outlined at the outbreak of the war.  This newspaper wrote: ‘Now is the time for the Poles to take control of the Polish trade and crowd out the Jews.’  So they crowded out the Jews with a vengeance.

“The Jewish representatives repeatedly appealed to the civil and military authorities against the outrage, but their efforts were in vain.

“ ‘You are right,’ the authorities would reply, ‘but why make so much noise about it?  Obtain redress by the process of law.  Bring suit in court and produce witnesses to prove that the houses and stores belong to you.’

“This reply was merely an inhuman jest at the expense of the Jews.  Where could they obtain redress?  How could they produce witnesses, since the Jews had been driven out and the Polish witnesses were themselves the robbers!

“The Jewish deputation and the Jewish natives of Skiernievice who had returned exerted every effort, but realizing that they could accomplish nothing left the ruined Jewish quarter with tears in their eyes and brought the sad news to Warsaw.

“The Jews of Skiernievice will remain homeless for a long, long time.  The wealthiest men are now compelled to be for bread.  They could save nothing of their possessions in the short twenty-four hours which were granted them to prepare to leave their native town.”

This is but a scene of the tragedy of Israel in Poland.

References

Grand Duke Nicolas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856-1929) – Biographical Profile at Wikipedia

Herman Bernstein – Biographical Profile at Wikipedia

Menahem Mendel Beilis – Biographical Profile at Wikipedia

Skiernievice – Description at Wikipedia

Tarnobrzeg – Description at Wikipedia

 

Chronicles From World War One: Jewish Civilians in Eastern Europe

Here are three articles from The Jewish Chronicle of early 1915 covering the treatment of Jewish civilians in Poland, by troops of German and Austria, and, Russia. 

Particularly notable is the aforementioned coverage of the expulsion of residents in Grodziak (part of Prussia commencing in 1793, and known as Grätz between 1887 and 1918), which is located in Western Poland.   

In time, and as a policy of the Russian Army, events of this nature would be repeated and vastly exceeded in scope and scale – in effect and intent, as mass deportations – as war progressed through 1915 and 1916, with dire impact upon the Jews of Eastern Europe.  

The relative brevity of these three articles (presumably there are others that I missed in my survey of the Chronicle, such as that of December of 1914 reporting upon the exile of families from Grodziak) would be in marked contrast to far (far) lengthier reportage that would appear in the Chronicle, Jewish Exponent, and other publications, as the war progressed.        

________________________________________

________________________________________

THE ATROCITIES IN POLAND
[FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT]
PETROGRAD

January 1, 1915

At Mishinetz (Lomza), the German invaders sacked all Jewish shops, and forced our coreligionists to destroy the Russian trenches.  On the return of the Russians the Poles denounced the Jews, all of whom, numbering 300 families, were exiled in the course of a few hours to Lomza and Ostrolenka.  Carrying Scrolls of the Law, they marched out and spent the night in the rain chanting Psalms.  The Governor, having been convinced of the innocence of the Jews, subsequently obtained a permit from the Military Commander authorising their return, but in the meantime the townlet was burnt.  Similarly owing to the Polish denunciations, the Jewish communities of Skernewitz, Kozennitzi, Novoalexandria, Iren, Mstchlov, Khortzeli, and Gniashov, were also expelled.  The number of exiles at Skernewitz alone amounted to 6,000.  The Polish mob looted the Jewish houses there despite the appeals of the Priests.  The marches of the exiled Jews were not free from molestation.  In many localities they were attacked and beaten.  Perhaps the most tragic case is the fact that the 1,500 families exiled from Grodziak (as I reported last week) included 300, whose heads were all at the Front fighting for their country.  “Go to Palestine, you Beilis,” was the cry of the Poles to the Jews.

At Raigorod, the Russians ordered the Jews to proclaim a “Cherem” against anyone who attempted to cut the telegraph.  The Germans then invaded the town and pillaged all Jewish shops.  During a subsequent battle, the synagogue and many houses were burnt, and the community had to escape to Bielostok.

The Polish Jewish townlet Politchno was burnt by the Germans.  The Austrians in their retreat also burnt the Jewish townlets Viskoa and Turobin (in Galicia).

At Lutomirsk, a bomb exploded during the battle, and destroyed a Jewish house, killing three Jews and wounding thirteen.

Owing to the battle at Lodz and the wholesale slaughter of many citizens by bullets, 10,000 people, including all the heads of the Jewish community, marched to Warsaw.  The mob again attempted to pillage Jewish houses during the bombardment, but the riot was suppressed.  During the fighting the Jews shared all their food with the Russian soldiers.

At Kalish, the Germans shot a Jewish baker and his three sons for failing to show lights in his windows.

At Izbitz (Lublib), Austrian soldiers killed a Jewish family named Ziberman (consisting of five persons), because it would not allow them to dishonor one of the daughters.

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RUSSIAN TROOPS TAKE JEWISH PRISONERS

March 12, 1915

The Commander of the fortress of Novogeorgievsk has issued a secret order to the troops to take Jewish hostages on all placed occupied by them in view of the statements in the German Press, describing the Jewish attitude towards the invaders as friendly on account of the Russian oppression.  At the same time the troops were ordered to notify the Jewish population that any discovery of assistance given by it to the Germans would result in the execution of the hostages.

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RUSSIAN ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE JEWS
ALLEGED SPIES
[FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT]
PETROGRAD

April 16, 1915

The military organ, the Russky Invalide, has printed a grave charge against the Jews.  The paper stated that before the war, the German Government intentionally impoverished the Jews of Posen and East Prussia, and subsequently subsidised them to settle in large numbers in Russian Poland in order to act as spies.  The paper charged the Jews with treachery and expressed the opinion that after the war among the military reforms will figure the necessity of clearing the hostile elements from the frontier.  Other anti-Semitic organs, including the Novoye Vremya, have naturally seized the opportunity of reproducing the charges and commenting upon them.

The Poles have charged the Jews of Seini (Suwalk) with obtaining the first information of the arrival of the Germans and with buying the property stolen by the invaders from the citizens.  In reality, the local synagogue was seized by the Germans and converted into a hospital, many Jews of military age there transported to Prussia, and much of the property of our brethren was confiscated.  The Jewish townlets, Grozda, Busk and Stabin, were partially destroyed during the invasion.

The tendency to see in every Jew a spy has led to the detention in a Polish townlet of Jews reciting their prayers.  The soldiers thought that they were communicating with the enemy through a wireless telephone.  The General in command, however, ordered their release.

Reference

Grodzisk Wielkopolski (Grätz), at Wikipedia

Chronicles From the East: Eastern European Jews – Soldiers and Civilians – in the First World War – An Overview

My prior two posts, “The World at War, The Jews in War: Jewish Military Service in World War One, in David Vital’s “A People Apart”“, and, “Images From the East: Russian Jewish Soldiers of the First World War, in “The Jewish World”“, focused upon the experiences of Jewish soldiers in the First World War. 

The former post centers upon a passage from D. David Vital’s book A People Apart, which presents a sociological and historical overview of the participation of Jews in the armed forces of the Allies and Central Powers from 1914 to 1918. 

The latter post is a little different: It displays a few of images published in the periodical The Jewish World (brother publication of The Jewish Chronicle) from 1914 through 1916, showing Jewish soldiers who served in the Army of Imperial Russia. 

Given the tremendous number of Jewish soldiers who served in the Army of Imperial Russia during the First World War, as well as the demographic and historical centrality of Eastern European Jewry in the history of the Jewish people, these pictures directly resonate with observations about Jewish WW I military service expressed in Dr. Vital’s book.  As a lengthy follow-up to this topic, I plan to bring you more information about this subject in future posts. 

This will be in the form of transcripts of a news items, letters-to-the-editor, essays, and investigative reports published in WW I-era issues of The Jewish Chronicle and The Jewish World, l’Univers israélite from France, and The Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia, which – like The Jewish Chronicle – is still very much in publication over a century after the end of The Great War.

How did I find these items? 

Well, the second-best answer is … very, very (very!)* slowly.

The best (and lengthier) answer is by reviewing all issues of the above periodicals published between late 1914 and early 1919.  While the four publications are available as 35mm microfilm at the New York Public Library, I believe that only l’Univers israélite, published between 1849 and 1939, is available in digital format: via the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The above-mentioned review was an effort to find news items directly covering, pertaining to, or even tangentially addressing military service by Jews in World War One.  Of which, from late 1914 through early 1919, there were, alas, inevitably many such items.

The near goal?  To identify and transcribe such items, simply for their own sake. 

The far goal?  As part of an effort to corroborate records about Jews who were military casualties and award recipients in the Allied armed forces, whose names appear in commemorative volumes about Jewish WW I military service (typically published in the 1920s; no such study was ever created concerning the military service of American Jews…), and of greater importance, to simply identify soldiers whose names never appeared in such books, in the first place.

Among the many, many (many!) such news items I discovered in this endeavor are a select few about:

1) Russian Jews – Soldiers and Civilians – and the Russian War Effort

2) Jewish Civilians in Eastern Europe – The experiences of Jewish civilians in Eastern Europe, as the tides of war carried the opposing armies of the Central Powers and Allies (specifically Imperial Russia) hither and yon; from west to east; from east to west; unpredictably; chaotically; often with appalling and tragic effect, through and across the world’s then demographic center of Jewish population;

3) Russian-Born Jews in England, and Military Service in the Allied Armed Forces –The controversy within English Jewry the about the military service of Jewish immigrants from Russia resident in England in the Allied armies, and thus indirectly in support of Russia, the country from which they sought refuge;

4) Thoughts and Observations – “Why are the Jews Fighting Germany?”, and, a subtle segue into Zionism.

5) Stories from the War – Non-Fiction (?), and Fiction – Two tales: One, a story about Jewish soldiers in a Russian military unit, in terms of the Jewish soldiers’ relationships with each other, and equally, their Russian officers and fellow soldiers.   Another, a brief tale about an encounter between Cossack troops and an impoverished Jewish woman in Poland.

Importantly, these news items weren’t categorized as such in the original publications.  Rather, it was only after reviewing these items and pondering their content, that I realized they could be set within the five above general areas, which are based on my own judgement.

So.  Here are these items, arranged as per the above categories, listed by periodical name, date of publication, and item title.  Unless otherwise specified, all these items are from The Jewish Chronicle.  I hope to bring them to you as full-text in the reasonably near future.

Jewish Civilians in Eastern Europe

January 1, 1915 – The Atrocities in Poland
March 12, 1915 – Russian Troops Take Jewish Prisoners
April 16, 1915 – Russian Accusations Against The Jews

The Jewish Exponent – February 19, 1915 – The Tragedy of Israel in Poland (by Herman Bernstein)
The Jewish Exponent – April 16, 1915 – The War and The Jews of Russia (by George Kennan)
The Jewish Exponent – August 13, 1915 – If It Be True…  A Terrible Indictment Against Russia
The Jewish Exponent – August 27, 1915 – Loyalty of Jews in War Lands Unshaken (by Alexander Brin)
The Jewish World – October 27, 1915 – A Roadside Scene in Russia (Photograph)
February 11, 1916 – The Russo-Jewish War Victims – (Photograph: “Driven Out”)
The Jewish Exponent – November 3, 1916 – How Russian Jews Suffered in War

The Jewish Exponent – March 4, 1921 – Tragic Plight of the Ukrainian Jews

Russian-Born Jews in England and Military Service in the Allied Armed Forces

July 7, 1916 – Russian Jews in Leeds
July 21, 1916 – The Plea of the Russian Jew (Letter from S. Paul)
November 17, 1916 – Russian Jews Appeal
November 17, 1916 – Russian-Born Jews and Military Service – Attestation in England

February 2, 1917 – Russians in the British Army – Attestation in Egypt

Thoughts and Observations

June 4, 1915 – Why the Jews are Fighting Germany

September 22, 1916 – From a Russian-Born Jew – Neo-Nationalism and Jewish Rights (3)

Russian Jews – Soldiers and Civilians – and the Russian War Effort

September 11, 1914 – Freedom for the Russian Jew
October 9, 1914 – Russian Jews and The War – Christian Soldiers Commend Jews
October 16, 1914 – Russian Jews and The War (Pardiztal)
October 16, 1914 – Russian Jews Daring Exploits (Miller)
October 23, 1914 – Russo-Jewish Bravery
November 27, 1914 – Tribute to Jewish Loyalty in Russia
December 25, 1914 – Russo-Jewish Loyalty – More Distinctions (Yoffin, Korman, Umansky, Zeitlin, Chutz, others)

January 1, 1915 – More Jewish Bravery in Russia (Kane, Marslialek, Tziz, Shuler, Dushansky)
January 1, 1915 – Russian Archbishop Kisses Jewish Hero
January 1, 1915 – Jewish Collections for Russian Soldiers
l’Univers israélite – January 1, 1915 – Les soldats juifs dans I’armee russe
January 8, 1915 – Young Jewish Heroes in Russia (Reichelson, Sharfinowitch, Gelfenstein, others)
January 22, 1915 – More Russo-Jewish Distinctions at the Front (Goldberg, Goldner, Kaplan, Yapolski, others)
January 29, 1915 – The Russian Army and The Jews (Holtzman, Itke, Schuster)
February 5, 1915 – Further Jewish Distinctions in Russia (Glickman, Grusenberg, Gunzburg, Rivkin, Treistman)
February 12, 1915 – Growing List of Russo-Jewish Heroes
February 19, 1915 – Russian Jews and the War
February 26, 1915 – Russian Jews and the War – Declaration in The Duma
February 26, 1915 – Another Striking List of Russian Jewish Heroes
March 12, 1915 – Large Russo-Jewish Honours List
March 19, 1915 – More Russo-Jewish Distinctions (Alexander, Kaplan, Olshwanger)
March 26, 1915 – Russo-Jewish Distinctions (Koffman, Markovitch, Shlionsky)
April 9, 1915 – Russo-Jewish War Honours (Annie X, Abramovitch)
April 16, 1915 – Russian Jews and The War
April 30, 1915 – Russo-Jewish Distinctions In The War (Markovitch, Lev Israel, Leipuner)
May 14, 1915 – Heavy List of Russo-Jewish War Honours
The Jewish Exponent – May 21, 1915 – Three Hundred Russian Jews Decorated
The Jewish Exponent – June 11, 1915 – A Jewish Girl in the Ranks
September 3, 1915 – Russo-Jewish Prisoners of War in Germany
September 3, 1915 – Five Hundred Russo-Jewish Heroes
December 24, 1915 – More Distinctions for Russo-Jewish Soldiers (Dubovitzky, Frenkel, Maltinsky, Rubinstein)

February 4, 1916 – General Kuropatkin and Jewish Soldiers
l’Univers israélite – February 4, 1916 – Les Juifs russes et la guerre
February 11, 1916 – A Russian Jewish Heroine (Madame Bernstein)
March 31, 1916 – Russian Rabbis Exempted From Service
April 21, 1916 – A Russian Commander of Jewish Soldiers
July 21, 1916 – Jews and Field Work in Russia

The Jewish Exponent – May 18, 1917 – Jewish Soldiers in the Russian Army
July 27, 1917 – A Jewish Legion Formed in Russia
l’Univers israélite – November 23, 1917 – Les Volontaires juifs russes

Stories from the War, Non-Fiction (?), and Fiction

The Jewish World – October 11, 1916 – The Cossack in a New Light
The Jewish World –June 23, 1915 – Reinforcements (Samuel Roth)

*Very?  Yes, very!

Images From the East: Russian Jewish Soldiers of the First World War, in “The Jewish World”

My post, The World of Soldiers: Images of British Jewish Soldiers in The Jewish World, during the First World War, presents examples of images of soldiers of the British Commonwealth during the First World War that appeared in The Jewish World, a sister publication of The Jewish Chronicle.  Though the overwhelming majority of such photographs in the World were of members of Commonwealth Forces, a small but significant number were of other subjects, notably and naturally Jewish soldiers in the armed forces of other Allied nations.  First in number among these pictures are images of French Jewish soldiers, while a second, tiny, but notable few are of Jewish soldiers in the army of Imperial Russia.

Six of these photos are shown below.

Significantly, this small group of images date from the early stages of the war; from autumn of 1914 through 1915, with the “last” picture – of prisoner of war Samuel Mlaver – dating from March of 1916.  Like most other pictures in the World, these images are captioned; also like most other pictures in the World, neither the photographer’s name nor the source of the image – whether personal or official – is listed.

Though “at six” this sample is rather tiny (!), it seems that the pictures – except for that of the Russian and Turkish border guards – are formal, studio portraits.  (Well, this was decades before Brownie cameras and Kodachrome, and a century before the portable electronic panopticons otherwise “smart”-phones.)  Perhaps these portraits were provided to the World by family members of these soldiers, who were then citizens of or recently emigrated to England; England; maybe by correspondents of the Chronicle, World, or other news publications or organizations, then stationed in Saint Petersburg.

Like the portraits in The World of Soldiers, I created these images at the New York Public Library, by taking digital SLR photos of 35mm microfilm copies of the World, as viewed through the display screens of reel-to-reel microfilm readers.  The quality of the pictures was then enhanced through Photoshopificationology.  (Just kidding: Adobe Photoshop.)

The presence of this very small number of images reflects the much larger attention of The Jewish Chronicle, The Jewish World, The Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia, PA), and l’Univers Israelit, towards the experiences of Russian Jewish soldiers, and Eastern European Jewry – particularly that of Poland and Russia – during the Great War.  Appearing in these publications especially from from late 1914 through 1916, such topics as the experiences of Jewish soldiers in the armed forces of Imperial Russia; the fate and suffering of Jewish civilians in Poland amidst the ebb and flow of the German and (especially) Russian armies; the military service of recent Jewish immigrants of Russian origin in England, were the topics of not infrequent focus and discussion.  Sometimes briefly; sometimes in very great length and detail.

I hope to bring you the full text of these news items (well, those that I’ve discovered) in future posts.   

In any event, in the way that “the map is not the territory”; a musical score is not sound; light is not vision, more than the photos as simple images, what about these five men, as people?

Aside from Jacob Dubov (killed in battle), the subsequent life and fate, as it were – to paraphrase Vasiliy S. Grossman – of Bogdanoff, Mlaver, Persitz, and Williamovsky, is unknown. 

Did they survive the Great War? 

Did they leave Russia during the chaos between 1917 and the consolidation of Soviet power? 

Did they remain in the Soviet Union? 

Probably in their forties or fifties by June 22, 1941, did they and their families survive the Second World War? 

And afterwards…?

All, unknown. 

So, on to the photos…

September 9, 1914

September 16, 1914: “On the frontier between Turkish and Russian territory.  Both soldiers on guard are Jews.”

______________________________

February 17, 1915: “A portrait of the Russian Jewish Volunteer, Bogdanoff, who had been awarded the Order of St. George for bravery.”

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April 28, 1915: “S.R. Persitz, who has been awarded a Military Order for bravery.”

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May 5, 1915: Russo-Jewish Hero: “Jacob Dubov, who received a Russian order for bravery, was killed on the field of battle.”

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June 2, 1915: Head Doctor: “Samuel Williamovsky, who has attained the highest doctor’s rank in the Russian Field Hospitals.”

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March 8, 1916: “Samuel Mlaver, Russian prisoner of war in Wittenberg.

 

The World at War, The Jews in War: Jewish Military Service in World War One, in David Vital’s “A People Apart”

Thus far, many of the posts at TheyWereSoldiers have focused upon Jewish military service in the Second World War.  While I possess a vast amount of information “waiting in the wings” for future posts pertaining to that era, some of my forthcoming posts may (? – !) have a change of emphasis: I hope to focus upon aspects of Jewish military service in the (now) over-a-century-passed First World War, or, as that conflict was known until the advent of World War Two, the “Great War”.

By way of a preface to this vast topic, I searched for a substantive, yet not overly detailed summary of Jewish military service in the military forces of both the Allies and Central Powers during the years of 1914-1918.

Then, I remembered Dr. David Vital’s magisterial, brilliantly written book A People Part – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, which includes – as an introduction – just such an account.  There, Dr. Vital’s describes the military experience of European Jewry in the First World War in sociological, cultural, political (and geopolitical) terms.  (This text appears within the book’s third and final section, entitled “New Dispensations”, as the start of Chapter 7, pertinently entitled “War”, on pages 647 to 651.)   

Dr. Vital’s treatment of Jewish military service in the Great War is consistent with the underlying nature of his book.  His 896 page monograph (in the softbound edition, the cover of which is displayed below) covers a 150-year-span of the history of European Jewry in a tone that is at once analytical, quietly impassioned, and practically (well, seems to me…I couldn’t put the book down) novelistic in literary style.  This is particularly so in the sense that the “contemporary” reader – contemplating Vital’s text from the vantage of the early 21st century, after the events recounted in the book have receded into and become part of the past – already “knows” how the story will conclude … even as the innumerable individuals mentioned within the book’s pages, by the very nature of time would not, could not, and did not.

Notably, the late Dr. Robert S. Wistrich wrote a very insightful review of A People Apart that appeared in the November, 1999 issue of Commentary.  While praising Dr. Vital’s book, Dr. Wistrich expressed ambivalence about what he deems to have the book’s focus upon interpretation of Jewish history centered upon politics and power relations, coupled with a relative lack of attention to the contributions and successes of European Jewry.  Be that as it may, the overall thrust of his review is solidly positive.  Other reviews – all laudatory – can be found at GoodReads.   

__________________________ 

By way of digression, thus far, my posts at this blog have avoided presenting opinions, musings, or speculations about culture, politics, and religion.  Yet, the verbal “structure” of the title of Dr. Vital’s Book – the end of which temporally “brackets” the course of European Jewish history within the time-frame of “1789-1939”, can’t help but make one ponder the condition of the Jewish people in contemporary times: Only one year before the commencement of the third decade of the twenty-first century.  Thus, whether a historian in a future distant, or a future only a few decades from now, will compose a study paralleling A People Apart – for the history of post-WW II European Jewry; for the history of American Jewry – or whether such a work will be unnecessary, is as yet unknown.   

What is certain about the history of the Jewish people (and, truth be told, the history of all men) is that though there can be similarities in the pattern and course of events between historical eras, history never repeats itself, from one era to another, with complete geometric congruence.  The only certainty we possess about the future is that “things” and “events”; “occurrences” and “circumstances” – in the lives of individual men and women; within families; among communities; in nations; and, within civilizations – can be expected to continue much as they always have. 

Until, of course, an era arrives when they no longer do so. 

__________________________ 

So.  With appreciation and acknowledgement to Dr. Vital, his text is presented verbatim, below.

“THE Jews of Europe passed through the valley of the shadow of death during the years 1914-18 with the rest of the continent’s population – which is to say, as best they could.  That they were no more spared the crippling horrors of the war than any one else was at once the result and the supreme expression of the radical change in their circumstances.  The days when, insignificant exceptions apart, it was natural, but also possible, for Jews to keep out of the way when the gentiles foolishly and incomprehensibly fought each other were over.  Where their participation in continental warfare, if any, had been on an essentially individual basis – as bankers and provisioners, but only very rarely as soldiers – it was now first and foremost as ordinary fighting men in the ranks of each of the armies of the belligerents.  Countless numbers of perfectly ordinary, non-political Jewish people marched off to war and to personal, often fatal involvement in the great and terrifying events that proceeded to unfold from August 1914 onwards along with all the other ordinary, non-political people who were marching off to war.  They did so, moreover, for all the world as if it were a natural and (in central and western Europe) a worthy and desirable thing to do.  Their political masters had still to determine whether, and if so in what way and to what degree, further advantage was to be taken of their services.  And in this respect there were differences.  In Russia there was no question at all of access to positions of influence and authority of any kind.  In Germany too the contradiction between what wartime state interest appeared to dictate and the political and military classes’ refusal to acquiesce in a really serious relaxation of the rules by which society had been governed in the past remained incapable of resolution to the end.  It would be worn down somewhat by undeniable necessity – as in the case of the sullen (and temporary) appointment of Walther Rathenau to a post as a principal organizer of the German war economy – but, no lasting change occurred.  In the west Jews were taken on freely enough wherever they seemed likely to bring advantage and, unlike in Germany, regret at the prospect of irreversible change in the social order tended to be wistful rather than bitter.  The unspoken rule remained, however, that while, when it was really necessary to do so, Jews might be admitted to the inner sanctums where high policy was decided, they would only be given places below the political salt, those reserved for specialists and experts, not those that would entitle them to wield real power.

Admission into the ranks of the armies themselves was free and unrestricted everywhere.  In the dire circumstances of the times and the universal, unslakeable thirst for men to man the trenches, the old assumption that the Jew was useless as a fighting man was forgotten.  In an environment that had generally been alien and hostile to him, the Jewish soldier was apt to be treated rather more decently than he had been in the past.  If he distinguished himself in battle he was more likely than before to be awarded the honours that were his due.  In some armies distinction in battle opened the way to promotion as well.  But not in all.  The imperial Russian army stood its ground in this respect to the end: its high command, with the full approval of the Tsar, refusing to sanction the granting of officer rank even to the most able, willing, and battle-proven of Jewish soldiers whatever the occasional fair-minded regimental commanded might say on his behalf.  But even here matters were not absolutely cut and dried.  Officer rank as military surgeons was conceded to Jewish doctors.  Here and there, where the dearth of literate, willing, and responsible echt-Russian candidates had reduced a battalion or brigade commander to desperation, the official eye might briefly overlook an individual Jewish soldier’s being given de facto authority to perform an officer’s role. (1)  (Of the flatly infamous treatment to which the Russian army’s high command subjected the civilian Jewish population in the area through which its forces moved on their way to the west and, more especially, on their retreat back towards the east, more will be said in in a moment.)

The German army, previously at one with the Russians in this respect, now rescinded its once unwavering refusal to promote suitable Jews to officer rank.  By the end of the war some two thousand Jews had been commissioned.  Still, no Jew was allowed to reach senior rank in the German army, unlike the Austro-Hungarian army in which, interestingly, some Jews had held rank as general officers even before the war.  And the true spirit in which the German high command viewed the matter of then Jewish citizens, and that of Jews in uniform in particular, is conveyed by its notoriously bloody-minded decision in October 1916 to launch a formal investigation into the contribution of the German Jews to the national war effort and of Jewish soldiers to service in the trenches by initiating a systematic counting of heads.  This so-called Judenzahlung (or Jew-count) was not only nastily hostile, but unwarranted.  Actual Jewish Frontsoldaten (front-line soldiers) were outraged.  It was, someone said, ‘as if the yellow patch had been sewn back on’. (2)  A tiny handful of pacifists and extraordinarily courageous and determined social democrats had indeed opposed the war and been jailed or otherwise hounded out of society and home.  But rare exceptions apart, German Jewry’s support for the war had been immensely (in retrospect almost embarrassingly) wholehearted at every level: from men of the greatest academic distinction (Hermann Cohen, the Kantian philosopher, and Fritz Haber, the chemist, for example) down to the simplest and least politically imaginative petit bourgeois.  When the war was over, the society of Jewish Frontsoldaten, the stain on their honour still burning, conducted a meticulous survey of its own.  It found that at least 100,000 Jews had served in the German armed forces or 18 per cent of the total Jewish population of imperial Germany of 550,000.  Of these 12,000 had been killed in action or died of wounds: namely 2.2 per cent of German Jewry.  Their study further demonstrated that these figures were virtually identical with those for the population of the city of Munich (a fair comparison, the Jews being a largely skilled and educated, urban population, much like the citizens of Munich): 645,000 citizens in all; 13,700 war dead. (3)  The German general staff’s own figures were never published.  But perhaps the most ominous aspect of the Judenzahlung was that when it was proposed and brought up in the Reichstag it was supported not only by the right wing, as was to be expected, but by the Catholic Centre Party and the National Liberals under Gustav Stresemann as well.

No such inquiries were instituted in other countries; nor were any warranted. (4)  The general record of Jewish participation in the fighting forces of the various belligerents was in each case at least as high as that of the general population and in some cases higher.  No figures as precise as those collated in Germany are available, but it has been fairly reliably estimated that some 450,000 Jews served in the immense Russian army – where it appears, moreover, that in consequence of the severely restrictive rules governing the military functions Jews might or might not perform, they tended to serve somewhat more commonly than others as front-line infantry soldiers and to suffer higher than average casualty rates in consequence.  Some 275,000 Jews served in the Austro-Hungarian army: c. 11 per cent of the total Jewish population of the empire; 41,000 served in the British armed forces or a little under 14 per cent of British Jewry; (5) 35,000 in the French army: or c. 20 per cent of the total Jewish population of France.  The overall figure for Jews serving in all belligerent armies (including the American army, in due course, in which the proportion of Jews was exceptionally high) was of the order of 1,500,000 or about 2 per cent of all mobilized manpower.  It was therefore roughly double that of the Jewish proportion of the entire population of the countries concerned. (6)

There was thus a sense – an ironic one, one may think – in which the Great War, in practice, was the supreme occasion on which the Jews Europe were called upon to be ‘useful’ to each of the several states which they were nationals in very much the sense that those men of the Enlightenment who had troubled themselves either to think about or to legislate for the Jews or both had had in mind.  The Jews’ skills, knowledge, experience, and native energy – coupled, in the central and western states, but not totally absent even in the east under the Russians, to their habitual loyalty to the sovereign power in the land and their manifest desire to please it – proved as easily available for harnessing to the machinery of war as Joseph II of Austria or his advisers had ever wished.  And the total effect, again very much as the men of the Enlightenment would have wished, was further to promote and hasten their acculturation.  The war initiated none of the essential processes of social and cultural change to which European Jewry was subject.  But by dint of scattering and dissolving great numbers of young Jewish men into the larger mass of mobilized society on a basis that was unprecedentedly random it did greatly accelerate them and intensify their impact.  It loosened the ties binding the individual to his community.  It provided Jewish soldiers – much as it provided great numbers of other disoriented people – with new, alternative, if of course no more than temporary focuses of loyalty.  And while it lasted there would be much else in its impact to support those who felt that the now century-old, imperfectly kept promise of fair dealing and equitable integration had not, after all, been false.  None the less, perversely, the lasting impact of the war so far as the Jews were concerned was to reassert and re-emphasize the ascription to the Jewish people of their ancient status as a distinct – and for certain purposes justifiably autonomous – national entity.  The major powers of Europe were moved, each in its way, in varying degrees, and, to be sure, with unequal consequences, to consider whether and how their own urgent national-political needs and interests might be squared with what were reckoned to be the collective needs, Interests, and aspirations of the Jewish people.  This was a most dramatic alteration of perspective, as remote from the ordinary hostility that fueled policy towards them in some cases as from the somewhat more considerate, but always unsystematic and severely limited, philanthropic basis on which their affairs were viewed (when they were viewed at all).  Nothing, certainly, could have been more remote from the legacy and purposes of the Enlightenment itself.”

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The following information, from The Committee for A Jewish Army’s 1943 publication The Fighting Jew, presents a statistical overview of Jewish military service in the First World War.  The data is, “Condensed from the booklet Jews in the World War, published by the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, in October of 1941.”  Notably the figures given below are identical to those presented in Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of Jewish History, on a map (appropriately) entitled “Jewish Soldiers 1914-1918”, on page 87 of that work.

Personnel Mobilized
Allies  
Belgium 1,000
British Empire 50,000
France 55,000
Greece 4,400
Italy 6,000
Rumania 38,000
Russia 650,000
Serbia 1,200
United States 250,000
   
Central Powers  
Austria-Hungary 320,000
Germany 100,000
Bulgaria 12,500
   
Total Casualties (Killed or Died in Service)
   
Allies  
Belgium 125
British Empire 2,400
France 9,500
Greece 300
Italy 500
Rumania 900
Russia 100,000
Serbia 250
Turkey 18,000
United States 3,400
   
Central Powers  
Austria-Hungary 40,000
Bulgaria 1,000
Germany 12,000
Turkey 1,000

(1) See Yohanan Rattner’s autobiography, for example: Hayyai ve-ani (Tel Aviv, 1978)

(2) Cited in Peter Pulzer, Jews and the German State (Oxford, 1992), 205

(3) The Reichsverband Judischer Frontsoldaten’s compilation was published in 1932 as the 423-page Die judischen Gefallenen des deutschen Heeres, der deutschen Marine und der deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918; ein Gedenkbuch.  It consisted chiefly of the names, regimental affiliations, and dates of death of the war dead (where known).  The great warlord himself, Hindenburg, now president of the republic, contributed a friendly preface.

(4) One partial exception was the case of Jews of Russian nationality who had settled in Great Britain, who for the greater part of the war were neither obliged nor permitted to serve in the British army, and who regarded consequent pressure to return to Russia to serve the Tsar as absurd, if not monstrous.  They were therefore a source of unending embarrassment to the established segments of English Jewry, but of opportunity to the Zionists who saw them as natural recruits to the ‘Jewish Legion’ that they founded to fight alongside the Allies (on which more below).

(5) The proportion of the general population serving the British armed forces was 11.5 per cent (Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry (Oxford, 1992), 235).

(6) A.G. Duker, ‘Jews in the World War’, Contemporary Jewish Record, 2, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1939); Y. Slutsky, and M. Kaplan, Hayyalim yehudiim be-ziv’ot eiropa (Tel Aviv, 1967); Encyclopaedia Judaica, xi, col. 1550; Felix A. Theilhaber, Die Juden im Wcltkriege (Berlin, 1916); Michael Adler, The Jews of the Empire and the Great War (London, 1919).

References

Gilbert, Martin, Atlas of Jewish History, Dorset Press [no location given], 1976

Gitelman, Zvi, A Century of Ambivalence – The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present, Schocken Books [Published in cooperation with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research], New York, N.Y., 1988

Nathans, Benjamin, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 by David Vital [Book Review], The Jewish Quarterly Review, Spring, 2006, 288-295, at JSTOR.org

Vital, David, A People Apart – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 2001

Vital, David, A People Apart – A Political History of the Jews in Europe, at GoodReads.com

Wistrich, Robert S., A People Apart, by David Vital (Book Review), Commentary, November, 1999

The Fighting Jew [no author], The Committee for a Jewish Army, New York, N.Y., 1943

 

The World of Soldiers: Images of British Jewish Soldiers in The Jewish World, during the First World War

While the majority of my posts have thus far focused upon Jewish military participation in the Second World War, I want to “step back” – chronologically, and, in in terms of subject matter – and shift attention to Jewish military service in World War One: The “Great War”.  Thus, this post will focus upon the British Jewish newspaper The Jewish World, a companion publication to The Jewish Chronicle. 

I discovered The Jewish World by chance, in the midst of reviewing The Jewish Chronicle for information about the military service of Jewish soldiers of the British Commonwealth within both world wars. 

As such, the World has proven to be an invaluable resource, albeit not in terms of “information”, but instead, in terms of images.

Founded by George L. Lyon and published in London from 1873 to 1934, The Jewish World, “filled a position of some importance in Anglo-Jewish life, publishing articles by various Zionist leaders, as well as by non-Jewish precursors of Zionism such as Henry Wentworth Monk, and Holman Hunt, the painter.  It was taken over in 1913 by The Jewish Chronicle, with which it was merged in 1934.” 

Though presumably edited at the same London office as the Chronicle, a review of issues of the World published between August, 1914 through late 1918 reveals the latter to have been notably different from the Chronicle in content and format, while both – presumably under the same ownership and editorial control – paralleled one another in terms of their central focus upon Jewish solidarity, unity, and Zionism.  As such, both periodicals covered significant news events (both in the United Kingdom and internationally) effecting individual Jews, or Jewish communities as a whole, with the World sometimes mirroring, to greater or lesser degree, the Chronicle’s coverage of such stories. 

(Digressing, the language of the Wikipedia entry for The Jewish Chronicle is quite revealing in stating that “The JC got a strong opposing voice by The Jewish Guardian, who counterbalanced the dominant Zionist propaganda of the Chronicle”.  Which raises the question: Is it not anti-Zionism that has ever been, and continues with increasing fervor, irrationality, and ferocity, to be the genuine propaganda?)

Anyway…

The differences between the publications, however, are notable – at least, as viewed through a 35mm microfilm reader!

The World featured little to no (well, it seems no…) advertising, and virtually none of the plethora of brief, ostensibly mundane, but nevertheless essential notices and news items – encompassing such topics as religious education, religious ritual, holidays, charity, community service, and philanthropy – vital; central to the ongoing activity of any Jewish community, regardless of its size or location, that was typical of every issue of the Chronicle.  Likewise, though the leading page of the Chronicle during the Great War sometimes carried obituaries and death notices (when I first saw this, I thought it very, very odd: “What, obituaries on a newspaper’s first page?!”), as well as new about “life cycle” events, such items appeared nowhere within in the World. 

In terms of its coverage of military service of Jews in the armed forces of the British Commonwealth, the Chronicle is invaluable, featuring lists of killed, wounded, and missing, and carrying news items – sometimes, news items in great depth! – about the experiences and observations of soldiers; excerpts of soldiers’ letters from soldiers to family friends; testimonials (sometimes, understandably hagiographic) about fallen soldiers; on rare occasion early in the war, even brief items about military service of Jews in the armies of the Central Powers.  In the World, such lists were absent; such stories relatively few. 

(Regretfully, no American Jewish periodical seems to have covered the military service of American Jews in WW I in such a systematic and comprehensive manner as did the Chronicle for Jews of the British Commonwealth.  But, that may be the subject of another post…) 

In appearance and essence, one might say that – issue per issue – the “density” and sheer quantity of information in the Chronicle far exceeded that of the World, which was reflected in their main content.  The World had a somewhat “lighter”, somewhat literary emphasis, rather than the comprehensive, detailed, and direct news reporting characteristic of the Chronicle.  As such, the World published fiction, with such items manifesting noticeable variations in style, length, literary quality.  A notable theme of such items was the challenge of maintaining Jewish belief and identity over time, individually and collectively, in the face of assimilation, acculturation, and intermarriage (yet not so much anti-Jewish persecution), amidst the unpredictable and increasingly turbulent tides of modernity, a topic penetratingly covered in Todd M. Endelman’s Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945.  In addition, some of the World’s content was taken from other publications, such as the American Hebrew, The Hebrew Standard, and Jewish Comment.

And one final, striking and singular difference between the Chronicle and the World…  Throughout the Great War, the latter published photographs of Jewish servicemen serving in the United Kingdom’s armed forces. 

Such photographs typically appeared within the two centermost pages of most any randomly selected issue, with the total number of “photos-per-issue” varying greatly from issue to issue.  The photographs were typically grouped thematically.  For example, some issues displayed photographs of soldiers in the Royal Engineers; sailors in the Royal Navy; soldiers in the Levant; members of the Royal Air Force; soldiers recovering from wounds in hospital; members of the French and other Allied Armies (the United States Army, not so much, if at all!); and inevitably, soldiers wounded, killed, and missing in action. 

The quality of the images – as viewed and copied from 35mm microfilm (remember film?!) viewed at the New York Public Library, in the Milstein Microform Reading Room (First Floor, Room 119, to be specific) varies tremendously from issue to issue.  Upon the same page within a randomly viewed issue, some images may be of excellent quality, and others?  Well, not so much. 

This difference in quality of the photographs is probably due to an overlapping set of factors, encompassing: 1) the quality of the original photographic print supplied to the World, 2) the quality of the printed image in the published newspaper, 3) the quality of the microfilmed image taken of the original newspaper, and finally, 4) (here’s a big one…) the reliability and optics of the 35mm microfilm reel-to-reel reader via which these images were viewed. 

Having reviewed issues of the World published during 1914 through 1918, I copied many, many (many) of these images by photographing the projected microfilm image – as displayed on a microfilm reader’s viewing screen – using a 35mm digital SLR.  Well, this was a few years before the NYPL replaced most of the mechanical / optical 35mm film readers with digital 35mm film viewers.  (C’est la vie…)

In cases of soldiers and sailors killed in action, missing, and wounded, I was able to find corroborating information in The Jewish Chronicle, The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the British Jewry Book of Honour, Australian Jewry’s Book of Honour, and maybe another publication or two.  Or three.  (Or four?)  ((Or five?!)) 

Oh, a small caveat…  While the British Jewry Book of Honour is replete with portraits of soldiers and sailors, I’ve not yet reviewed my copy to see if the photographs in the World’s 1914-1918 issues appeared in the former. 

So.  Below are nine images from the The Jewish World of the early twentieth century, now visible in the twenty-first: “images” evocative of a world that no longer exists; events that have ceased; people who exist only as memories … and most likely, memories of memories. 

For even if the memory of man – and particularly, memories of individual men – is a fleeting thing, the past yet exists, and can never be erased.   

References and Suggested Reading

The Jewish Chronicle, at Wikipedia

The Jewish World, at Jewish Virtual Library

Adler, Michael, Reverend (editor), British Jewry Book of Honour, Caxton Publishing Company, London, England, 1922

Endelman, Todd M., Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, In., 1990

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“Pte. J. Aarons, Lond. Regt. (Wounded)”
(The Jewish World, August 22, 1917)

.ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Private Joseph Aarons, 233751
He was killed in action of June 15, 1917
Member of London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), 2nd / 2nd Battalion
Born in 1897
Son of Judah and Sarah Aarons, 5 Bishop’s Road, Cambridge Heath, London
Memorialized at Arras Memorial, Pas de Calais, France – Bay 9
The Jewish Chronicle: Casualty List of July 13, 1917 (incorrectly lists surname as “Aaron”)
British Jewry Book of Honour, page 76 (also lists surname as “Aaron”)

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“Pte. Isaac E. Balon, 7th Manchester, killed at the Dardanelles.”
(The Jewish World, July 7, 1915)

.ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Private Isaac “Eric” Balon, 2403
He was killed in action on May 29, 1915
Member of Manchester Regiment, 1st / 7th Battalion, E Company
Born 1896
Son of Sophia Balon, 15 Shorncliffe Green, Whitworth Park / 91 Oxford St., Manchester
Buried at Redoubt Cemetery, Helles, Turkey – Sp. Mem. A,93
The Jewish Chronicle: Obituary Section of July 9, 1915 and May 30, 1919
British Jewry Book of Honour, page 78

______________________________

“Pte. L. Da Costa, Middlesex Regt.”
(The Jewish World, August 22, 1917)

.ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Private Lewis Da Costa, L/14851
He was killed in Action on August 1, 1917
Member of Middlesex Regiment, 2nd Battalion
Born 1897
Son of Isaac and Rachel Da Costa, 35 Hedson Buildings (and) 73 Walton Buildings, Shoreditch, London, E
Buried at Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium – XLVII,B,11
“Deeply Mourned by His Parents & Relatives.  May His Soul Rest in Peace”
The Jewish Chronicle: Casualty List of August 17, 1917
The Jewish Chronicle: Obituary Section of August 17, 1917, and August 2, 1918
British Jewry Book of Honour, page 86

______________________________

“Pvt. David Eckstein, Devonshire Regt., who was killed in action.”
(The Jewish World, January 20, 1915)

.ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Private David Eckstein, Z/6943
Killed in action on December 17, 1914
Member of Devonshire Regiment, 1st Battalion
Born 1893
Mother was Eva (Eckstein) Moss (mother), 13 Providence Place, Aldgate, London
Address also 22 Collingwood St., Bethnal Green, London, E
Memorialized at Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium – Panel 21
British Jewry Book of Honour, page 87

______________________________

“Lieut. J.H. Levey has just received commission having risen from the ranks.”
(The Jewish World, October 21, 1914)

This man’s name does not appear in the CWGC database; he presumably survived the war.  His name is also absent from The Jewish Chronicle between August of 1914 and mid-1919.

Of all the many soldiers’ photographic portraits published in wartime issues of The Jewish World, the photo of Lieutenant Levey is among the best – if not the very best – in terms of focus, contrast, and composition, let alone quality of reproduction as a microfilmed image.  

______________________________

“Pte. Harry Myers, Lord Lovat’s Scotts.”
(The Jewish World, March 8, 1916)

Akin to Lieut. Levey, Pte. Myers’ name does not appear in the CWGC database. 
During the war, The Jewish Chronicle listed the names of eight soldiers surnamed “Myers”, whose first names began with the letters “H…”, of whom four were killed, and four others wounded.  However, none of these eight soldiers were recorded as having been assigned to Lord Lovat’s Scotts.  Perhaps Harry (at least, this Harry Myers) survived the war? 

______________________________

“Seaman Sam Stump, H.M. “New Zealand” Troopship.”
(The Jewish World, April 5, 1916)

Like Lieutenant Levey, and probably like Pte. Myers, Seaman Stump’s name does not appear at the CWGC database.

______________________________

“Gunner A. Stern, Cape Peninsular Rifles, one of four brothers serving in the same regiment.”
(The Jewish World, August 11, 1915)

Gunner Stern, name also absent from the CWGC database, is posed at a Vickers machine gun.

______________________________

“Pte. S. Zimmerman, Ox. & Bucks L.I., Reported Killed.”
(The Jewish World, March 21, 1917)

.ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Private Soloman Zimmerman, 14678
Member of Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, 5th Battalion
Killed in action August 24, 1916
Born 1897
Buried at Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval, Somme, France – IV,I,5
On matzeva: “God Rest His Soul in Peace”
The Jewish Chronicle: Casualty List of October 13, 1916
British Jewry Book of Honour, page 124

______________________________

The image below show the casualty and award list appearing in The Jewish Chronicle of October 13, 1916, with Private Zimmerman’s name appearing last in the “Killed” section.  (This image is a digitally “cleaned-up” scan of a photocopy.)   

This list, only one of the sad abundance of such lists that were published in the Chronicle from late 1914 through mid-1919, is entirely representative of the presentation of information about casualties and award recipients in that newspaper.  Note that while the soldiers’ surnames are presented in full, the first name is limited to only a first initial.  Military service numbers are absent, though the Chronicle did include soldiers’ numbers commencing in July of 1917, while the names of the regiment (or other major organization to which the soldier was assigned) appeared throughout the war.  Similarly – unfortunately! – there is absolutely no genealogical information: No next of kin; no residential address; no city or town of residence.

Taken as a whole, while this information is invaluable, it can sometimes be extremely challenging (if not impossible) to “disambiguate” – as the word goes – specific individuals.  For example, 39 soldiers by the name of “J. Cohen” appeared in Casualty Lists in the Chronicle between 1914 and 1919. 

Yet, regarding Private Soloman Zimmerman… 

Alas, that he fell for his country. 

Alas, once more, and yet again, that he was not the only member of his family to have so fallen.  Two of his brothers – Joseph and Nathan – were also killed during the war.

Rifleman Joseph Zimmerman, C/6123, a member of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 16th Battalion, was killed on April 23, 1917. 

Private Nathan Zimmerman, 42533, a member of the Yorkshire Regiment, 2nd Battalion, was killed on May 8, 1918.

Neither Joseph nor Nathan has a place of burial. 

Joseph is memorialized at the Arras Memorial, at Pas de Calais, France (Bay 7), while Nathan is memorialized at the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium (Panel 52 to 54 and 162A).  Unlike Soloman, I do not believe their names appeared in The Jewish Chronicle, though the names, first initial, and service numbers of all three brothers appear on page 124 of Reverend Michael Adler’s British Jewish Book of Honour. 

The three Zimmerman brothers were the sons of Jacob (by trade a tailor) and Eva Zimmerman, of 34 Kensington Gardens, Balsall Heath Road, in Birmingham.  According to the 1911 Census of England and Wales – when the family was residing at 30 Sherlock Street in Birmingham – their siblings included Israel, a tailor like his father (born 1880), Maurice (born 1882), Sarah (1885), Woolfe (1887), Abraham (1889), Rachel (1893), and David (1899).  Though Soloman appears in that census, brothers Nathan and Josephs’ names are absent; for Joseph, probably because he had married Florence Moore (noted in his biographical profile at British Jews in the First World War) and likely resided elsewhere.  (In the 1901 Census, Nathan is recorded as residing with his parents, the family then living at 29 Lower Essex Street in Birmingham.)    

You can view the Zimmerman family’s record in the 1911 Census (from Ancestry.com) below:
 
And, you can view Kensington Gardens in Birmingham, as seen in this image captured by the roving digital panopticon (otherwise known as Google Street View) from March of 2019.    

The Sailor’s Father: One Day on the Somme: The Fate of Serjeant Reuben Gould (Father of P/O Thomas William Gould, VC, RN ) July 22, 1916

Thus for Tommy Gould’s life before war: but what came before?  This too is a story in its own right, but one that – with the passage of time and absence of records and correspondence – may likely remain only partially known. 

As noted in Tommy Gould’s obituary in the Independent, and in more detail in his biographical profile at RN Subs, his father Reuben was killed in action in 1916, when Tommy was only two years old. 

This singularly significant “clue” – a first name and surname – is all that is needed to return the following record from the CWGC database:

Reuben Gould

Serjeant GOULD, REUBEN
Service Number L/7328

Died 22/07/1916
Aged 35

1st Bn., Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment)

Husband of Mrs. C.E. Cheeseman (formerly Gould), of 6, Woolcomber Lane, Dover.

Buried at CATERPILLAR VALLEY CEMETERY, LONGUEVAL
Location: Somme, France – XIV, F, 2

So, it was true:  Tommy Gould’s father lost his life in the Battle of the Somme.  He was among the 141 men of the 1st Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment who were killed in action, or died of wounds (among an initial total of 391 killed, wounded, and missing) on July 22, 1916, during a series of assaults on the German trenches at High Wood. 

A verbatim transcript of the War Diary / Intelligence Summary of the R.W.K.R., 1st Battalion for that day – found within UK WW I War Diaries at Ancestry.com – is presented below.  Note that the account concludes with details about casualties among officers, but not – perhaps inevitably, given the staggering number of killed and wounded – among Ordinary Ranks.  Which, would have included Serjeant Gould.

This is the “cover” page of the War Diary….

….and this is the “first” page of eight, covering events of July 22, 1916.

During the day orders were received that the 13th Brigade in conjunction with Brigades on right and left was to attack at night Enemy position.  As a preliminary operation the Battn. and 14th WARWICKS were to attack and capture trench along road at 10 PM.  The main attack was timed to commence at 12:30 AM but was afterwards postponed 1 hour.  The attack by the Brigade on our right was not to commence till 3:30 AM.  The main objective was the Enemy’s trench which runs almost due EAST from the N part of HIGH WOOD.  The Enemy however held an intermediate trench running partly behind and partly along the track running SE from E point of HIGH WOOD.  Our front line along the track running SE from S point of HIGH WOOD.  The Battn. was ordered to attack this intermediate trench, which was not visible from its own trench as it was some distance beyond the crest of a gently rising slope.

The main idea was that the Battn in conjunction with 14th R War Regt should attack the intermediate trench and consolidate it.  When this had been done the 2 / K.O.S. Borderers were to pass over the intermediate trench and attack the main enemy trench in rear.  The 15th R. War. Regt was in reserve.

The frontage allotted to the Battn was from the left of the trench at HIGH WOOD to point where enemy trench touched the road, a distance of approximately 400 yards.  The 14th R. War Regt being on the right on a frontage of about the same breadth.

Orders to the following effect were issued to the Battn.:  The hour fixed for the assault was 10 pm. & at that hour the barrage was to lift.  A & B Coy’s were in the front line and were to attack in two waves.  They were ordered to leave their own trenches before the barrage lifted and to get as close to the enemy trench as possible so that when the barrage lifted they could dash in.  The second waves of these boys were to carry entrenching tools which were to be left as close to the enemy trench as possible before final assault.  C Coy were ordered to occupy our original front line at 10 pm and as soon as enemy trench was captured they were to dig a support trench joining up the advance posts already made in front of our line.  This Coy was also to join up E corner of HIGH WOOD with the captured trench.  O.C. Coy had also to detail a bombing party under an Officer to seize enemy strong point at E corner of HIGH WOOD should such strong point be found to be held by enemy.  The existence of this strong point was known of, but the Division on the left guaranteed to deal with it previous to the assault, and it was afterwards stated that we had 2 Vickers Guns in position at the E edge of HIGH WOOD.  At the last moment, however, doubt arose as to the situation at this strong point, and in consequence of vagueness and uncertainty that existed, this party was detailed as an extra precaution.  D Coy was ordered to occupy our front line trenches as soon as vacated by C Coy but to keep well to the left in order that the 2 / KOSB could use this trench as an assembly trench previous to their attack on main position.  2nd Lt. Dando with bombing party was ordered to accompany the first line on extreme left and investigate a short line of enemy trench which ran at right angles to & on the left of & beyond their front trench.  If opposition was met he was to block this trench and wait till 2 / KOSB passed through, when he was to advance and seize it.  C & D Coys, in spite of above orders, were to be prepared to support A & B Coys should necessity arise and in that case all work allotted to them was to be left.  The position of Battn H.Q. was not to change.  Each man carried two Mills Bombs (to form a reserve in captured trench) and an extra bandolier of ammunition.  Communication to be by visual signaling (if smoke permitted) and by runner.  Covering parties were to be put out directly position was captured.  Wire for consolidating captured trench was to be carried up by D Coy.  The attack was to be pressed home at all costs.

At the same time as this attack other Divisions were attacking on the left and the 95th Bde. Was to attack DELVILLE WOOD, but the latter operation could not be commenced until we had gained our objective.

A & B Coys left their own trenches at 9.52 pm and advanced without many casualties until arriving near the road on the crest of the hill, when they were met with extremely heavy rifle & M. Gun fire from direction of E corner of HIGH WOOD and enemy trenches N of Wood, but also suffered casualties by shells from our own Artillery falling short.  Only two parties of these boys reached the enemy trenches.  On the right about 30 men of A Coy reached enemy trench and entered it, but were attacked by the enemy with bombs, as the 14th R. WAR. on their right had failed to reach the trench, and as their own supply of bombs soon ran short they could not maintain their position.  All the officers of this Coy. had become casualties.  On the left Lt. J.J. SCOTT with 21 men of his Platoon entered the enemy trench and killed some Germans.  Lt. SCOTT put out patrols in front, generally consolidated the position for a length of about 40 yds., and held on to it for about 4 hours.  The enemy attempted a bombing attack on the left but this was frustrated by Pte. BUTLIN, who, stepping over the enemy bombs before they exploded, threw bombs of his own and drove the enemy back.  These were the only two parties to reach enemy’s trench.  C & D Coys both went up to reinforce, and later on a part of 2 / KOSB & 2 Coys of 15th R. WAR.R. were sent forward but the latter lost direction.  Some reached enemy line but eventually all troops were withdrawn to our original front line.  The bombing party of C. Coy, sent against the strong point in HIGH WOOD, found the corner of wood already in occupation by the Brigade on left, but it is believed that it was retaken by enemy.  Lt. PEACHEY in command of party was himself wounded.  It is however probably that the strong point itself was never reached and was further back from the corner than was supposed.  In any case, the majority of the casualties in the Battn. were caused by M. Gun fire from here.  Lt. DANDO with his party did not find the isolated trench on the left flank and returned to H.Q. to report the situation.  He afterwards went forward again and brought back a further report.  Lt. HEALEY, the Adjutant, was sent forward to reorganize parties who were in front of our trenches and bring them back to our original front line.  He was, however, wounded when near the German trenches, and could not be brought in.  Lt. CALE, Lewis Gun Officer, also reached the German trenches and assisted in reorganising the line.

Eventually some 250 men were collected by Capt. WRIGHT in our original front line.

On our right, 14th R. WAR. R. were met by a sustained fire of bombs & rifle & M.Gun fire, and did not reach the enemy’s trench.

The Casualties amounted to

Officers
Killed – Missing – Wounded:14 (See below)

O.R. [Other ranks]
Killed – Missing – Wounded377

The individual casualties among officers were as follows: –

A Coy
Capt. COBB, W.R. was wounded very early in the fight
2 Lt. FLEMING, J.A. was wounded & missing [CWGC KIA “John Allister”]
2 Lt. CORNFORD, W.D. was missing [CWGC KIA “William Day”]
2 Lt. LEWINSTEIN, H. was killed by a bomb [CWGC “Harry”]

B Coy
Capt. BENNETT, C.T. was wounded & missing [CWGC KIA “Charles Tudor”]
Capt. LEATHERDALE, D.R. was missing
2 Lt. FOX, C.J. was killed

C Coy
Capt. OGLE, W.M. was wounded
Lt. BULLEN, G. was wounded
2 Lt. PEACHEY, G.F. was wounded
2 Lt. CROSS, P.F. was wounded & missing [CWGC KIA “Philip Frank”]

D Coy
Lt. BARTLETT, L.A. was missing [CWGC KIA “Lionel”]
2 Lt. GILLETT, F. was killed

H. Qrs.
Lt. HEALEY, R.E.H. was wounded & missing [CWGC KIA “Richard Elkanah Hownam”]

Many acts of gallantry were performed, the following being the most conspicuous: –

No. 7725 Corporal GEORGE HATCH.

The Battn. when advancing to the assault of the German trenches, came under very heavy machine gun and shell fire and a large number of men were wounded.  As the intensity of the fire did not diminish it was impossible for the stretcher bearers to go out and collect wounded.  However Cpl. HATCH, who was in charge of the stretcher bearers, went out by himself, walked about in the open and carried wounded to cover in shell holes.  This was done some 200 yards in front of our own lines and within very close range of the enemy machine guns.  He afterwards carried back many of the men to our own line.  He continued his work with the utmost coolness and disregard for personal safety for about 7 hours and until well after daylight when eventually he was himself wounded.  He was under very heavy fire the whole time.  He was seen to carry back at least 50 cases, and there is no doubt that he saved the lives of a large number of men. 

______________________________

A search of Google Maps for the above-listed “6 Woolcomber Lane, Dover” yielded the following three maps, showing at successively larger scales southeastern England, then Dover, and finally Woolcomber Street (formerly Lane?) in Dover.  Notably, while the map shows the nominal and presumably original location of the street, a 2018 aerial view of the same location reveals that none of the dwellings that presumably once existed there remain standing, a parking lot having taken their place.

An effort to find more information about Serjeant Gould’s family revealed the record below, from the 1911 Census of England and Wales.  (Thanks, Ancestry.com!)  Intriguingly, though there is no entry for Reuben Gould, it appears that Reuben’s wife – Tommy Gould’s mother? – appears as “Christian Elmer [Almer?] Gould, age 26.  Christian is the daughter of Maria Mary Anna Irons (58 years old), and the mother of Sidney Robert Gould (age 1/ ½ years; Tommy’s older brother?) and sister of Morris William Irons, age 16 ½.

Being that Tommy Gould was born in 1914, his name by definition would not appear in this Census. 

Notably, the document was completed by Maria Irons, who lists, below her signature, the address as 5 (not 6) Woolcomber Lane. 

Reuben’s British Army WW I Medal Roll Index Card is presented below…

…and here is the Graves Registration Report for Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, with Reuben’s name appearing second from top.  Notable is his designation as a Private (not a Serjeant, as listed in the CWGC record and Medal Roll Index Card), and the fact that his tombstone bears a Crucifix – not a Magen David – which presumably would indicate the religious affiliation he designated upon entering the Army.

If so – it may be so; it certainly seems so – this is reflective of the plethora of anecdotes, news items, and lengthy opinion pieces appearing in The Jewish Chronicle throughout the First World War – written by “ordinary ranks” as well as officers, rabbis, community leaders, intellectuals, and other public figures – pertaining to the decision by some Jewish servicemen to identify their religious affiliation as other than such upon entering the military.  This topic was also addressed in the American Jewish Press during America’s involvement in the war.

Every man is an individual, subject to and both the captain and captive of his own strengths and weaknesses; his own fears and hopes; his own life experiences and observations.  Such decisions would have been motivated by the same set of conundrums that have confronted the Jewish people ever since the beginning of Jewish emancipation only a few centuries ago: The desire to avoid antisemitism; the natural, universal, perennial human desire to want to smoothly belong to a “group” – any group – be that group military, civilian, or familial – without “rocking the boat”; pure self-interest; and even more than realized, a degree of acculturation and assimilation that would gradually and bear-inevitably have moved the centrality of Jewish identification – in time irrelevant or muted – to the quiet periphery of one’s life and priorities.

Far, far more could be said about this topic.  Vastly amounts have already been written.  Even in and after 2018, more will follow.  But two excellent monographs on the subject – enlightening and disturbing; illuminating and disillusioning; revelatory and astute – are the late Barry Rubin’s Assimilation and Its Discontents (Times Books, 1995) and Radical Assimilation in English-Jewish History 1656-1945, by Todd M. Endelman (Indiana University Press, 1990). 

In any event, though Serjeant Gould’s name did not appear in The Jewish Chronicle, or Reverend Michael Adler’s 1922 British Jewry Book of Honour, the names of two other serviceman – 2 Lt. Harry Lewinstein – (listed above) and Pvt. Hyman Rosenthall – did. 

In its issue of 11 August 1916, as it did throughout the war, the Chronicle published the most recently available list of the names of Jewish soldiers reported killed, missing, wounded, and injured, or who died in service.  Typical of WW I casualty lists presented in that newspaper, soldiers’ names are given in “descending” order by rank, with officers appearing first. 

Importantly – exasperatingly, in terms of genealogical research! – throughout the war, the Chronicle rarely published a soldier’s full first (and middle, if any) name, instead using only his initials.  I don’t know if this reflected the editorial policy of the Chronicle itself, or, was simply the format of Casualty Lists released by the War Office.  In any event, the ambiguity inherent to some names can make the identification of specific, identically-named individuals more than challenging.  

So, here is the Chronicle’s casualty list for August 11, showing (for the purposes of this post) only soldiers killed in action.   

Genealogical information covering Jewish soldiers killed in action on July 22, 1916 – as well as two Jewish soldiers wounded on that date, Sapper Myer Joseph Isaacs and Gunner Cyril N. Mandelson, both Australians – follows below….

Known Jewish Military Casualties – July 22, 1916

Killed

– .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה. –

Ben Kimoun, Maurice Mouchi, Soldat de 2eme Classe, Armée de Terre, Zouaves, 3eme Regiment de Zouaves
Number 11452, Class 1913, Matricule 1881, Recrutement Oran
France (Algérie)
Born in Oran, Algeria, 10/24/93
Killed by the enemy [Tué a l’ennemi]; France, Meuse, Bras
Place of burial unknown
l’Univers Israélite  9/28/17
Les Israelites dans l’Armée Francaise – 12
Le Livre d’Or du Judaisme Algérien (1914-1918) – 204

Braver, Max, Soldat de 2eme Classe, Armée de Terre, Infanterie, 352eme Regiment d’Infanterie
Number 11135, Class 1915, Matricule 59, Recrutement 3eme Bureau, Seine
France (Roumanie)
Born in Craiova, Roumania, 12/2/77
Killed by the enemy [Tué a l’ennemi]; France, Somme, Assevillers
Necropole Nationale “Lihons”, Lihons, Somme, France – Tombe Individuelle, No. 1685
Les Israelites dans l’Armée Francaise – Not listed

Fraenkel, Bruno, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 49 Infanterie Regiment, 2nd Bataillon, 6 Kompagnie
Born May 5, 1884, Berlin, Germany
Lived in Eberswalde
(Missing)
Place of burial unknown
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 138

Gros, Arnold, Soldat de 2eme Classe, Armée de Terre, Artillerie, 13eme Regiment d’Artillerie de Campagne
Number 13716, Class 1917, Matricule 833, Recrutement 3eme Bureau, Seine
France
Born at 9eme Arrondissement, Paris, 9/19/97
Killed by the enemy [Tué a l’ennemi]; France, Somme, Mametz
Necropole Nationale “La Cote 80”, Etinehem, Somme, France – Tombe Individuelle, No. 750
Les Israelites dans l’Armée Francaise – 38

Jonas, Emil, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 252 Pioner Kompagnie
Born Dec. 12, 1877, Hamburg, Germany
Lived in Altona
(Missing)
Place of burial unknown
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 372

Kahn, Nathan, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 1 Lazarett Trupp, Freiwilliger Krankenpflege
Born Jan. 18, 1884, Munchen, Germany
Lived in Altenstadt
Place of burial unknown
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 292

Kronheim, Georg, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 113 Infanterie Regiment, 2 Bataillon, 5 Kompagnie
Mrs. Rosa (Brodek) Kronheim (wife); 1 child, Winsstrasze 4, Berlin, Germany
Mr. and Mrs. Nathan and Maria Theresa (Lewinberg) Kronheim (parents), Berlin, Germany
Born May 31, 1879, Berlin, Germany
Lived in Berlin
Judischen Friedhof zu Weissensee, Berlzu, Germany
Hank, Sabine, and Simon, Hermann, Bis der Krieg uns lehrt, was der Friede bedeute [Until the War Teaches Us What Peace Means] Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz, Germany, 2004, 79
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 147

Lazarus, Hans Heinz, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 223 Reserve Infanterie Regiment, 1 Bataillon, 1 Kompagnie
Born April 20, 1894, Munchen, Germany
Lived in Berlin
(Missing)
Place of burial unknown
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 292

Lebenstein, Manfred, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 3 Garde Grenadier Regiment, 3 Bataillon, 12 Kompagnie
Born August 3, 1886, Munchen, Germany
Lived in Charlottenburg
Kriegsgräberstätte in St.Quentin (Frankreich), Block 3, Grab 68
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 292

Levi, Julius, Soldat, Deutsches Heer, 25 Reserve Infanterie Regiment, 2 Bataillon, 7 Kompagnie
Born May 21, 1878, Schluchtern, Germany
Lived in Kassel
Place of burial unknown
Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch – 330

Lewinstein, Harry, 2 Lt., British Army, Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment), 1st Battalion
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and Fanny Lewinstein (parents), 22 Great Windmill St., London, W, England
Born London, England, 1889
KIA July 22, 1916
Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, Longueval, Somme, France – XXX,B,7
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 72

The 2017 Google Maps image below shows the contemporary appearance of the wartime home of the Lewinstein family: 22 Great Windmill Street, London, W., now the location of Soho Radio.   

Rosenthall, Hyman, Pvt., 28134, British Army, Northumberland Fusiliers, 16th Battalion
Mr. Isaac Rosenthall (father), 44 Grafton St., Leeds, England
(also) 42 Whitlock St., Leeds, England
Born 1893
KIA July 22, 1916
Blighty Valley Cemetery, Authville Wood, Somme, France – III,E,1
British Jewry Book of Honour – 115

This image of Hyman Rosenthall appeared in The Jewish World (The Jewish Chronicle’s sister publication) on May 2, 1917.  The image was recorded from 35mm microfilm – at the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library – using a digital SLR.  (I don’t think The Jewish World has yet been digitized.)

These two soldiers were wounded on July 22, 1916, but survived.  Biographical information about them was found by reviewing their digitized Attestation Papers, via the website of the National Archives of Australia.   

Isaacs, Myer Joseph, Sapper, 1288, Australian Imperial Forces, 3rd Tunneling Company
Wounded in France
Mrs. Ruby Isaacs (wife), Mayville, Tupper St., Marrickville, New South Wales, Australia
Born Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1885
WIA July 22, 1916
British Jewry Book of Honour – 558
Attestation Papers list religion as “Jewish”; Civilian trade: Fitter

Mandelson, Cyril Nathaniel, Gunner, 3972, Australian Imperial Forces, 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Trench Mortar Battery
Wounded at Pas de Calais, France
Mr. Joseph Mandelson (father), 101 Victoria St., Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia
Born Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1887
WIA July 22, 2916
British Jewry Book of Honour – 561
Attestation Papers list religion as “Jewish”; Civilian trade: Agent; Married: Ruby Jane Hannah Mandelson

Genealogical information about the ten other soldiers whose names appear in the Chronicle’s casualty list – aside from 2 Lt. Levinstein and Pvt. Rosenthall – follows:

Casualty List – The Jewish Chronicle – August 11, 1916

– .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה. –

Baum, Harry Hyman, L/Cpl., 22701, British Army, Border Regiment, 1st Battalion
Mr. and Mrs. Nathan and Leah Baum (parents), Stepney, London, England
(also) 7 Dempsey St., London, E, England
Born 1894
KIA July 3, 1916
Louvencourt Military Cemetery, Somme, France – Plot I, Row D, Grave 2
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 79

Cohen, John, Rifleman, 5467, British Army, Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion
86 Boundary St., Shoreditch, London, E, England
KIA July 1, 1916
Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France – Pier and Face 16B and 16C
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 84

Davis, J., Rifleman, R/15167, British Army, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 13th Battalion
42 Vallance Road, London, E, England
KIA July 10, 1916
Gordon Dump Cemetery, Ovillers-la-Boisselle, Somme, France – VII,Q,2
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 87

Gluckman, Samuel, Pvt., 6171, South African Infantry, 3rd Regiment
Mr. and Mrs. J. and J. Gluckman (parents), 61 Fortescue Road, Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
(also) P.O. Box 66, Vereenigang, South Africa
Born 1900
KIA July 9, 1916
Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France – Pier and Face 4C
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 91

Jacobs, Joel, 2 Lt., British Army, Yorkshire Regiment, 5th Battalion
Mr. and Mrs. Michael and Pearl Jacobs (parents), Harringay, 52 Walter Road, Swansea, England
Born 1895
KIA July 20, 1916
La Laiterie Military Cemetery, Heuvelland, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium – VII,D,13
On Matzeva: “I WAS GUIDED BY THY COUNSEL AND AFTERWARD RECEIVED WITH THY GLORY”
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16, 7/28/16 (obituary)
British Jewry Book of Honour – 71

This picture of Lt. Joel Jacobs appeared in The Jewish World on August 23, 1916.  Identical to that of Pvt. Rosenthall, the image was copied from microfilm via a digital SLR.  Throughout the First World War, The Jewish World published several hundred portraits of Jewish servicemen of England and the Commonwealth countries, as well as more candid images of life in the military.  The quality of these images varies enormously.

Levy, Lewis, Pvt., 18418, British Army, Hampshire Regiment, 1st Battalion
Mrs. Sarah Levy (wife); Henry and Evie (children), 104 Eric St., Mile End Road, London, England
(also) 132 Bridge St., London, E, England
Mrs A. Levy, Mat, John, Mrs. Moss Harris, Mrs. Mark Harris, Mrs. L. Zimmerman, Mrs. R. Simmons, Morris, Kate, and Beck (brothers and sisters)
Born 1893
KIA July 1, 1916
Bertrancourt Military Cemetery, Somme, France – Plot I, Row G, Grave 13
On Matzeva: “NOBLY HE ANSWERED HIS DUTY’S CALL”
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16, 7/14/16 (obituary)
British Jewry Book of Honour – 104

Lewis, J., Pvt., 16891, British Army, Somerset Light Infantry, 8th Battalion
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and Leah Lewis (parents), 11 Sandfield Road, Aberavon, Port Talbot, West Glamorgan, Wales
Born 1892
KIA June 29, 1916
Norfolk Cemetery, Becordel-Becourt, Somme, France – I,A,81
On Matzeva: “IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE FROM MOTHER, SISTER, BROTHER R.I.P.”
The Jewish Chronicle 7/21/16, 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 105

Rubin, Jack, Pvt., 4583, South African Infantry, 9th Regiment
Mr. and Mrs. Morris and Sarah Rubin (parents), Cape Town, South Africa
Born 1894
KIA July 16, 1916
Dar Es Salaam War Cemetery, Tanzania – 2,A,14
On Matzeva: “MAY HIS DEAR SOUL REST IN PEACE”
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 115

Shilling, Harry, Pvt., 2267, British Army, London Regiment, 7th Battalion
Mrs. Eva Shilling (wife), 34 Peter St., Hightown, Manchester, England
(also) 16 Mount St., London, E2, England
Born 1881
KIA May 24, 1916
Aubigny Communal Cemetery Extension, Pas de Calais, France – I,C,24
On Matzeva: “IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY DEAR HUSBAND FROM HIS LOVING WIFE AND CHILDREN”
The Jewish Chronicle 8/11/16
British Jewry Book of Honour – 116
British Jewry Book of Honour gives surname as “Schilling”, while CWGC and LJC Casualty List give surname as “Shilling”

References

Thomas W. Gould

Biography (Military Art)

Biography (Royal Navy Subs)

Biography (Kent History Forum)

Obituary (Independent)

Place of Commemoration / Burial (FindAGrave)

Miscellaneous

Victoria Cross (Wikipedia)

Jewish Victoria Cross Recipients (London Jews in the First World War)

VC * GC Association (VCGCA)

Books

Adler, Michael, British Jewry Book of Honour, Caxton Publishing Company, London, England, 1922

Hank, Sabine, and Simon, Hermann, Bis der Krieg uns lehrt, was der Friede bedeute (Until the War Teaches Us What Peace Means) Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz, Germany, 2004

Die Jüdischen Gefallenen Des Deutschen Heeres, Deutschen Marine Und Der Deutschen Schutztruppen 1914-1918 – Ein Gedenkbuch, Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten, Forward by Dr. Leo Löwenstein, Berlin, Germany, 1932

Les Israelites dans l’Armée Française (Israelites [Jews] in the French Army), Angers, 1921 – Avant-Propos de la Deuxième Épreuve [Forward to the Second Edition], Albert Manuel, Paris, Juillet, 1921 – (Réédité par le Cercle de Généalogie juive [Reissued by the Circle for Jewish Genealogy], Paris, 2000)

Le Livre d’Or du Judaisme Algérien (The Gold Book of Algerian Jewry) (1914-1918) (Réédité par le Cercle de Généalogie juive, Paris, 2000) [Avec la collaboration de Georges Teboul et de Jean-Pierre Bernard]

 

 

Soldiers from New York: A Spitfire in April – Ernest Willy Rosenstein – I

The chronicle of Jewish military casualties for April 2, 1945, is not yet complete, for an additional name must be added: Lieutenant Ernest Willy Rosenstein of the South African Air Force. 

But, his story can only be told by way of the life of his father: Leutnant d.R. Willy Rosenstein, who served in the Imperial German Air Service during the First World War…

“Like father, like son.”

A cliché; brief, yet valid, describing a perennial aspect of human nature.

While hardly true for all families, there sometimes occurs striking similarities across the lives of parents and children:  Some sons indeed recapitulate the paths of their fathers, as least as much as the intersection between human decision and the spirit of an era will allow.  Yet, even as men make choices and “act”, the course of their lives – however fleeting; however lengthy – appear to be carried upon currents of chance: sometimes benevolent; sometimes callous; often puzzling.  As noted by World War One Orthodox German-Jewish soldier Martin Feist, contemplated from the finite perspective of man – the decree of God can indeed appear to be unsearchable.  Thus for “mankind” in the abstract; thus for men as individuals.

Such was epitomized some seven decades ago, one month before the end of the Second World War in Europe. 

On the second of April in 1945, a Royal Air Force Spitfire was lost during a combat mission over Italy.  Its pilot, Ernest Willy Rosenstein, a 22-year-old Jew who like his parents had been born in Germany, did not survive.  

As had lived the son, so had – for a time – lived the father, Willy Rosenstein. 

Born in Stuttgart (1) in 1892, Willy was an aviator and aerial “ace” in Germany’s World War One Air Service, the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte, in which he attained nine (or ten?) aerial victories in combat against Britain’s Royal Air Force and France’s Armée de l’Air, while flying alongside such figures as Hans Jeschonnek (future Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe), six-victory ace Herman Gilly, Pour le Mérite winner Carl Degelow, and – with tremendous irony – Herman Göering.  A figure within the automotive and especially the aviation worlds of pre-war Germany, he would survive “The Great War” and eventually return to those fields of endeavor, becoming an amateur racing-care driver, while enjoying private flying at Böblingen (a town in Baden-Württemberg).  However, technology and military service were not the only; hardly the central, embodiments and definitions of his life.  Forced to leave Germany with the advent of the Third Reich, he would in 1936 settle in South Africa with his family.  Alas; as a husband and father; as an immigrant whose adopted homeland would eventually be at war with the land of his birth; and as the father of an only son, time and chance never gave him a solid respite from the winds of the twentieth century.   

If any respite, at all. 

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The above is a very brief recapitulation of Willy’s life, but rather than present the entirety of his story, “this” post actually serves as a steppingstone for an account of the brief life of his son. 

As such, it’s focused upon the central aspects of Willy’s military service, and largely (but not only) based upon what is probably the most detailed account of Willy’s life, which was written by Robert B. Gill some 33 years ago.  Published in the Winter, 1984 (Volume 25, Number 4) issue of the Cross & Cockade Journal, “The Albums of Willy Rosenstein – Aviation Pioneer – Jasta Ace”, includes 65 illustrations (2), and is derived from material in Willy Rosenstein’s three photo album scrapbooks, which Mr. Gill received from Jules Loth of Johannesburg, “…who “discovered” Willy Rosenstein’s memorabilia.”  As comprehensive as it is detailed, Robert Gill’s article covers Willy’s pre-war life and participation in German aviation, and concludes with a fascinating and moving account of Willy’s eventual emigration to South Africa and all-too-brief postwar life.  The issue’s cover is shown below:

The list of cited references at the end of this post includes links to other sources of information about Willy Rosenstein.

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Photographs

It helps to attach a face to a name, let alone an image to the designation of a military aircraft.  So, here are representative images of Willy’s story, beginning with a picture of Willy, himself:

Willy, seated atop an Albatross D.III.  This image, which appears on various websites and as a sepia-toned image in the epilogue of Nikolai Müllerschoen’s 2008 movie “The Red Baron”, appears in Robert Gill’s Cross & Cockade article.  The caption: “Summer 1917 at Flugplatz Isegehem, in Flanders, with Jasta 27 as Rosenstein poses aboard his Albatross D.III, possibly 163/17.”

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Marek Mincbergr’s 1/48 model of the Pfalz E.1 (215/15) flown by Willy while an Offizier Stellvetreter (Officer Deputy) in FFA (Feldfliegerabteilung) 19.  Two photographs of this aircraft, both taken in December of 1915, appear in Robert Gill’s article.  One image shows Willy standing in the aircraft’s cockpit.   

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Peter Hochstrasser’s 1/72 model of the Fokker D.VII Willy flew while in Jasta 40, bearing his personal “white heart” emblem.  A photo of this aircraft (perhaps the only one extant?) also appears in Bob Gill’s article, captioned thusly:  “The black Fokker D.VII with der Weisse Harz (The White Heart) personal insignia of Willy Rosenstein.  Carl Degelow discussed Rosenstein’s insignia in his memoirs, Germany’s Last Knight of the Air.  He stated: “The remarkable choice of this pilot (Rosenstein) clearly indicated a good relationship with the eternal woman.  If we had to forgive him for this, we did it gladly, for he was our ‘patron saint,’ performing for us the essential duty of keeping the rear free of our enemies, as he flew last and highest in our formation.”  Rosenstein attained seven of his 10 aerial victories after joining Jasta 40 (on July 9, 1918), at least some while flying this aircraft.

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Four Jasta 40 Fokker D.VIIs, each bearing the emblem of its pilot.  The aircraft (left to right) are those of: 1) Leutnant Carl Degelow (white stag), 2) Leutnant Frodien (white eagle), 3) Leutnant Willy Rosenstein (white heart), and 4) Leutnant Hans Jeschonnek (white bull).  The pilots who would have flown these aircraft were identified through Pheon Decals’ decal sheet for aircraft of Jasta 40 under Leutnant Carl Degelow.  (Unfortunately, the identity of the artist (the image being present on Tumbler) is unknown.) 

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Postwar: A column from the 1928 telephone book for the post office district of Stuttgart (Amtliches Fernsprechbuch fur den Ober post direktionsbezirk Stuttgart, 1928), from Ancestry.com.  This appears to have been a version of what is known as the “Yellow Pages” (if you can still find yellow pages…!); that is, a directory of names, address, and phone numbers of private businesses, retail establishments, and factories.

The entry for Willy is listed as “Fabrikant, Teilnehmer der Fabrik Lederfabrik Zuffenhausen Sihler und Cie.  (Fernspech * 807 49), Eduard-Pfeiffer-Strasse 178”.  (Manufacturer, Member of Zuffenhausen Sihler Leather Fabric Company (Phone Number * 807 49), 178 Eduard-Pfeiffer Street)

Though not specifically mentioned in Robert Gill’s article, this is consistent with Willy’s postwar activity in the leather manufacturing business, in which he was employed – between 1926 and 1929 – by, “the firm that manufactured the world-famous “Salamander” shoe line.” 

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Historical Accounts

Information about Ernest Willy’s military service appeared as early as 1924, in Dr. Felix A. Theilhaber’s Jüdische Flieger im Weltkrieg, which publication was preceded in 1919 by Dr. Theilhaber’s Jüdische Flieger im Krieg.  The text concerning Willy, followed by Adam M. Wait’s 1988 English-language translation, is presented below.  Page numbers (from the original 1924 edition) are given in parentheses following the excerpts.

In diesem buch hat Herr Dr. Theilhaber authentisches und wohlgepruftes material zusammengetragen, das der grossen offentlichkeit zum ersten male kenntnis gibt von dem anteil der Juden an der entwicklung und nicht zuletzt an den opfern der fliegerwaffe.

Herausgegriffene beispiele nennen uns die namen der im schulbetrieb wie vor dem feinde gefallelenen.  Sie alle fanden ihren tod in frieden unde krieg auf dem flugfeld der ehre.  Nie hat je das gemeinsame band eine kampfgruppe inniger umschlungen und gefesselt als die flieger.

Bon diesem grossen horizont aus gesehen schrumpfen politsche, soziale und religiose gegensatze innerhalb der zunft in ein “nichts” zusammen.

Der gedanke, etwa einem der fruhesten vorkampfer im Deutschen flugwesen, Willy Rosenstein, Jablonsky oder Abramowicz, den ihnen gebuhrenden ehrenplatz nicht zu gonnen, entstammt lichtscheuen maulwurfsnaturen, aber nicht fliegerherzen. (page 6)

In this book Herr Theilhaber has compiled authentic and well-scrutinized material which for the first time gives the general public knowledge of the part played by Jews in the development of – and not least, sacrifice to – the aerial weapon.

Selected examples tell us the names of those who died in training as well as in the face of the enemy.  They all found their death in peace and war on the field of honor.   Never has a common bond bound a fighting force more intimately than in aviation. 

Political, social, and religious differences dwindle away to nothing within the fraternity.

The idea of perhaps begrudging one of the earliest pioneers in German aviation, like Willy Rosenstein, Jablonsky or Abramowicz, the place of honor due them comes from lowly characters, but not from the hearts of aviators.

Wohl aber durfen wir den fliegerwerdegang des Willy Rosenstein, sohn der Frau Regierungsrat Dr. Nordlinger (jetzt in Stuttgart wohnhaft) etwas eingehender behandeln.

Mit 18 jahren treffen wir ihn anno 1911 als flugschuler bei Rumpler, am 3 November 1911 besteht er das pilotenexamen und wird bei Rumpler fluglehrer.  Er gibt offizieren der ersten ausbildungskurfus auf den beruhmten Rumplertauben.

Der junge pilot flog bei Rumpler einige der flugwochen mit.  Da er aber nur ein schulflugzeug uberwiesen bekommen hatte, erzielte er keine besonderen leistungen.

Im jahre 1913 geht er von Rumpler ab, um bei der gothaer waggonfabrik den flugzeugbau einzufuhren.  Zuerst war Rosenstein vier monate bei der Zentrale Fur Aviatik in Hamburg, einem spezialunternehmen der gothaer.  Dort konnte er bei dem Mecklenburger Rundflug eine gute gothaer taube fliegen, die ihm den ersten preis im gesamtklassement und den gewinn samtlicher ehrenpreise einbringt.

Nach uberfiedelung nach Gotha fliegt Rosenstein die neuen militarmaschinen ein, beteiligt sich bei den neukonstruktionen und nimmt an den abnahmeflugen anteil, sowie an der ausbildung weiterer flugschuler.  Wahrend der fluglehrerzeit bildete er 80 offiziere und 40 zivilflieger aus, in Hamburg absolvierte er bereits den 2,000.  Flug, in Gotha den 3,000 mit seiner mutter als passagier.  Da viele fluge auf unerprobten apparaten vollfuhrt wurden, stellt diese tatigkeit nicht gerade das einfachste, was es auf der welt gab, dar.

1914 meldet er sich als kriegsfreiwilliger und kommt Januar 1915 zum Armeeflugpark V nach Montmedy, im Februar zur Feldfliegerabteilung 19 nach Porcher.  Dort flog er mit Leutnant Martin als beobachter.  Ein jahr spater wird er Leutnant d. R. der fliegertruppe.  Im April 1916 zieht Rosenstein bei einem fernaufklarungsflug jenseits der Maas bei Verdun im kampf mit einem Franzosischen jagdflugzeug den kurzeren.  Leutnant Martin erhielt einen schweren oberschenkelknochenschusss und zwei weitere steckschusse in das andere bein und wurde sosort ohnmachtig.  Rosenstein hatte drei dumdumschusse in beiden beinen.  Mit dem einen bein steuert er jedoch sein flugzeug nach dem flughafen, um noch glatt zu landen.  Von der stelle fuhr man ihn ins lazarett.  Aus der narkose aufgewacht, findet der operierte auf der bettdecke das E.K. I.

Rosenstein gesundet rascher als sein begleiter.  Aber ohne ihn will er nicht mehr beobachtungsfluge ausfuhren.  So wird er jagdflieger bei der armeefokkerstaffel in der Champaigne, dann bei der Jadgstaffel 27 in Flandern, bei der er seine zwei ersten abschusse erzielte.

Zur erholung zum Grenzschutz in die heimat (Karlsruhe) kommandiert, erhalt er fur einen abschuss uber Hagenau den “Zahringer Lowen”.  Und wieder also gekraftigt, bittet er um ein frontkommando, wo es mehr zu tun gibt.  So erscheint er bei der Jagdstaffel 40 bei Lille.  Der erste frontflug lasst gleich einen Englander brennend dicht neben ihm niedergehen.  Unter der weiteren fuhrung der staffel unter Leutnant Pegelow erzielt Rosenstein sechs weitere anerkannte asbchusse, wofur er zum Hohenzollern-Hausorden eingereicht wurde, dessen aushandigung die revolution verhinderte.

Mit ausnahme der knappen lazarettzeit und des zweimonatigen oben gekennziechneten heimatkommandos war Rosenstein ununterbrochen also vier jahre lang als flieger an der feindlichen front.  (pages 76-77)

Now let’s deal in somewhat more detail with the flying career of Willy Rosenstein, the son of Frau privy councilor Dr. Nordlinger (now residing in Stuttgart). 

We meet him in the year 1911 at 18 years of age as a flight pupil with Rumpler, with whom he became a flight instructor after passing the pilot’s exam on 3 November 1911.  He gave officers their first training course on the famous Rumpler Taube. 

The young pilot flew with Rumpler in some of the Flight Weeks.  But since he had only been assigned a school aircraft he achieved no special performances. 

In the year 1913 he left Rumpler in order to be initiated into aircraft construction with the Gothaer Waggonfabrik.  First Rosenstein spent four months at the Center for Aviation in Hamburg, a special venture of Gotha.  There at the Mecklenburg Round Flight he was able to fly a good Gotha Taube, which brought him first prize in general classification and the winning of all first prizes. 

After emigrating to Gotha, Rosenstein test-flew the new military machines, participated in new construction, and took part in acceptance flights, as well as the training of further flight pupils.  During his period as a flight instructor he trained 80 officers and 40 civilian flyers.  In Hamburg he completed his 200th flight and in Gotha his 300th with his mother as passenger.  Since many flights were executed on untested machines, this occupation didn’t exactly represent the easiest in the world. 

In 1914 he enlisted as a wartime volunteer and in January 1915 arrived at Armeeflugpark 5 at Montmedy.  In February 1915 he was assigned to Feldflieger Abteilung 19 at Porcher.  There he flew with Leutnant Martin as observer.  A year later he became a Leutnant der Reserve in the air service. 

On 28 April 1916 during a long-range reconnaissance flight, Rosenstein drew the shorter straw in combat with a French fighter plane on the other side of the Meuse near Verdun.  Leutnant Martin received a bad hit in the thigh and two further bullets in the other leg and became faint.  Rosenstein had been wounded in both legs by three dum-dum bullets.  However, with one leg he steered the aircraft to the aerodrome and managed to make a smooth landing.  He was driven from the spot to the hospital.  Upon awakening from anesthesia, the patient found on his bed cover the Iron Cross 1st Class. 

Rosenstein recovered more quickly than Martin, but didn’t want to carry out any more observation flights without him.  He became a fighter pilot with the Armee-Fokker-Staffel in the Champagne and then with Jagdstaffel 27 in Flanders, with whom he achieved his first two victories. [1] 

Ordered to the homeland (Karlsruhe) for border protection during recuperation, he received the “Zahringer Lions” for a victory over Hagenau.  Restored once more, he asked for assignment to the front, where there was more to do.  Thus he appeared at Jagdstaffel 40 near Lille. [2]  His first operational patrol with this unit resulted in an Englishman going down in flames close beside him. [3]  Under the further leadership of the Staffel by Leutnant Degelow, Rosenstein achieved six further victories, for which he applied for the Hausordern von Hohenzollern, the delivery of which was prevented by the revolution. 

With the exception of the brief time in hospital and the above-mentioned two-month home assignment, Rosestein had flown on the enemy front for four years without interruption.

***

Es sind also drei zivilpiloten der vorkriegszeit todlich verungluckt: Abramowitsch, Neufeld, Dunetz; dazu konnen noch absolut sichergestellt: Rosenstein, Jablonsky, Wechsler, zwei Dr. Lisauer, einige andere sind fraglich.  Somit waren unter den 500 friedenspiloten sieben, wahrscheinlich mehr Judische piloten gewesen!  (page 78)

Three Jewish civilian pilots of the pre-war era crashed fatally: Abramowicz, Neufeld, and Dunetz.  Other pilots for certain in addition were Rosenstein, Wechsler, and two Dr. Lissauers.  Some others are questionable.  So amongst the 500 peacetime pilots there had been in fact seven, probably more, Jewish pilots. 

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Mention of Willy appeared twice in Der Schild, the publication of the association of German-Jewish war veterans, the “Reichsbundes Jüdischer Frontsoldaten”.  The first was in the paper’s issue of December 27, 1935, which, under the title “Makkabaer der Lufte – 200 jüdische Kriegsflieger”, presents a list of German-Jewish airmen of the First World War, within many names accompanied by the airmens’ ranks, cities or towns of residence, and for a small few – as in the case of Willy – the identity of the specific military unit(s) in which they served.  The brief entry for Willy is presented below:

Der Schild
December 27, 1935

“Juden bei der Luftwaffe”

Rosenstein, Willy
Leutnant der Reserve
Armeeflugpark V
Feldfl.-Abteilung 19 u. Jagdstaffel 27 u. 40

Rosenstein, Willy
Leutnant der Reserve
Armeeflugpark V
Field Flying Unit 19 and Hunting Squadrons 27 and 40

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A subsequent article under the same title appeared in the February 7, 1936 issue of Der Schild and presented biographical profiles of several German Jewish aviators, among them Willy:

Der Schild
February 7, 1936

“Makkabaer der Lüfte”

Wurttembergische Frontflieger
Von acht fielen vier.

Aus Wurttemberg sind mindestens acht judische Frontflieger fetsgestellt worden.  Vier davon sind gefallen: Lt. d.R. Pappenheimer aus Mergentheim, Zurndorfer aus Rexingen, Weil aus Ulm und Kriegsfreiwilliger Flugezugfuhrer Eugen Levi aus Stuttgart.

Aus Stuttgart sind ferner die Kameraden Hermann Schmidt, Willy Rosenstein, Lt. d.R. Wolfenstein und aus Oberdorf-Bopfingen Uffz. Flugzeugfuhrer Siegfried Heimann.

***

Kam. Willy Rosenstein

Zu der kleinen Zahl der Vorkriegs-piloten gehört unser Kam. Willy Rosenstein – Stuttgart.  Schon mit 19 Jahren macht er im Jahre 1911 (!) sein Pilotenexamen bei Rumpler in Berlin.  Als junger Pilot fliegt er einige der Flugwochen mit, freilich nur im Schulflugzeug.  1913 geht er von Rumpler ab, um bei der Gothaer Waggonfabrik  den Flugzeugbau einzuführen.  Zunachst ist er vier Monate bei der Zentrale für Aviatik in Hamburg, ein Spezialunternehmen der “Gothaer”.  Dort konnte er bei dem Mecklenburger Rundflug eine Goather Taube fliegen, die ihm den Ersten Preis im Gesamtklassement und den Gewinn samtlicher Ehrenpreise bringt.  Nach Uebersiedlung nach Gotha fliegt Kam. Rosenstein die neuen Militärmaschinen ein, ist bei den Neukonstruktionen und an den Abnahmeflügen beteiligt sowie an der Ausbildung weiterer Flugschüler.  (Wir haben auf seine Vorkriegstätigkeit schon kurz in der Sonderuasgabe, “Juden bei der Luftwaffe: nom 27 12 1935 auf Seite 2 unter “Jüdische Vorkriegspiloten” hingewiesen.)

Bei Kriegsausbruch meldet sich Kam. Rosenstein sofort als Freiwilliger, muss aber zunachst weiter Offiziere als Flieger ausbilden, und fürchtet schon, nicht mehr rechtzeitig ins Feld zu kommen.  Januar 1915 kommt er zum Armeeflugpark V, nach Montmedy, im Februar zur Feldflieger-Abt. 19.  Gechzehn Monate flog er mit Leutnant Martin aus Stuttgart als Beobachter, bis beide eines Tages mit erheblicher Verletzung gerade noch ihren Flugpark erreichten.  Es war im April 1916 bei einem Fernaufklärungsflug jenseits der Maas bei Verdun, im Kampf mit einem französichen Jadgflugzeug.  Leutant Martin erhielt einen schweren Oberschenkel-Knochenschusz und zwei Steckschüsse in das andere Bein; Rosenstein hatte drei Schüsse in beiden Beinen; mit dem einen Bein steuerte er jedoch sein Flugzeug nach dem Flughafen zurück und landete glatt.  Von der Stelle fuhr man ihn ins Lazarett.  Aus der Narkose erwacht, findet der Operierte auf der Bettbecke das E.K. I.  Inzwischen zum Leutnant d. R. befördert, flog er die verkschiedensten Typen bei mannigsachen Formationen.  Eines Tages ist er bei der Jagdstaffel 27 in Flandern und vollfuhrt bald seine ersten beiden Abschüsse.

Zur Erholung zum Grenzschutz nach Karlsruhe kommandiert, erhält er für einen Abschüss über Hagenau den “Zähringer Löwen”.  Bald bittet er wieder um ein Frontkommando und erschient bei der Jadgstaffel 40 bei Lille.  Er bringt es im ganzen auf

neun Abschüsse

Der erfolgreiche, mutige Kampfflieger wird zum Hausorden von Hohenzollern eingereicht, – die Aushandigung wird durch den Ausbruch des Umsturzes verhindert.

***

The Shield
February 7, 1936

Maccabees of the Air

Württemberg Front Flyers
Of eight, four fell.

From Wurttemberg are found at least eight Jewish front airmen.  Four of them have fallen: Lt. d.R. Pappenheimer from Mergentheim, Zurndorfer from Rexingen, Weil from Ulm and war volunteer Flugflugfuhrer Eugen Levi from Stuttgart.

From Stuttgart also are comrades Hermann Schmidt, Willy Rosenstein, Lt. d.R. Wolfenstein and from Oberdorf-Bopfingen Corporal Aircraft pilot Siegfried Heimann.

***

Comrade Willy Rosenstein

Among the small number of prewar pilots belongs our comrade Willy Rosenstein – Stuttgart.  At the age of 19, in 1911 (!), he completed his pilot exam at Rumpler in Berlin.  As a young pilot he flies some weeks with them, but only in a trainer airplane.  In 1913 he left Rumpler to import [?] aircraft from the Gotha wagon factory.  First, he spent four months with the Hamburg Aviation Office, a specialist company of “Gothaer”.  There he was able to fly a Goather Taube on the Mecklenburg sightseeing flight, which gives him the first prize in the overall classification and the winning of all honorary prizes.  After moving to Gotha Comrade Rosenstein is involved in flying new military aircraft, the construction of the new designs and test flights, as well as in the training of further flight schools.  (We have already referred to his pre-war status in the special edition, “Jews in the Air Force: issue of December 27, 1935 on page 2, under “Jewish Pre-War Pilots”.)

At the outbreak of the war, Comrade Rosenstein reports immediately as a volunteer, but must first continue to train officers as an aviator, and is already afraid not to come into the field [of battle] in time.  In January 1915 he comes to Army Flying Park V, to Montmedy; in February to Field Flying Unit 19.  He flew with Leutnant Martin from Stuttgart as an observer for a total of sixteen months, until they both just managed to reach their flying park one day with considerable injury.  It was in April 1916 during a remote reconnaissance flight beyond the Maas at Verdun; in the fight with a French pursuit plane Leutnant Martin received a heavy shot in the thigh bone and two shots into the other leg; Rosenstein had three bullets in both legs; but with one leg he returned his plane to the airport and landed smoothly.  From the place he was taken to the hospital.  Awakening from anesthesia, operated upon, he finds on the corner of the bed the Iron Cross First Class.  Meanwhile promoted to Leutnant der Reserve, he flew the most diverse types in various formations.  One day he is at Hunting Squadron 27 in Flanders and soon executes his first two kills.

Commanded to rest for border protection at Karlsruhe, he receives the “Zahringer Lowen” for a kill over Hagenau.  Soon he asks again for a front command and appears at Jadgstaffel 40 at Lille.  He gets on the whole

nine kills

The successful, courageous military pilot is submitted for the House Order of Hohenzollern, – the delivery [of the award] is prevented by the outbreak of the revolution.

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Willy Rosenstein’s Military Assignments and Awards

Robert Gill’s article identifies the units to which Willy Rosenstein was assigned, their locations, and, his military awards, which are summarized below:

Summer, 1914 – Enlisted; assigned to Infantry Regiment No. 95, Gotha
24 August 1914 – Militärische Fliegerschule-Gotha
18 October 1914 – Transferred to Flieger Ersatz Abteitung 5 at Hannover
19 October 1914 – Promoted to Unteroffizier
~ 26 October 1914 – Awarded the Flugzeugführerabzeichen (Military Pilot’s Badge)
24 November 1914 – Promoted to Vizefeldwebel and appointed Offizierstellvertreter (equivalent of Warrant Officer)
January 1915 – Ordered to Ettappen Flieger Park 5 at Montmedy
6 March 1915 – Ordered to first combat unit, Feldfliegerabteilung 19, located at Flugplatz Porcher, northwest of Mars-la-Tour
29 March 1915 – Received Iron Cross 2nd Class
21 August 1915 – Awarded Württemburg Silver Military Service Medal
28 April 1916 – Seriously wounded in action; awarded Iron Cross 1st Class
30 May 1916 – Released from hospital and sent home on reparative leave to Stuttgart
31 May 1916 – Reported to Flieger Ersatz Abteilung 10 at Böblingen
2 June 1916 – Awarded Württemburg Service Medal in Gold
17 September 1916 – Assigned to Armee Flug Park 3
19 September 1916 – Reported to Armee Fokker Staffel A.O.K. 3; redesignation of Armee Fokker Staffel A.O.K. 3 to Jasta 9 effective 7 October 1916
9 November 1916 – Ordered to Jastaschule at Valenciennes for four weeks duty as flight instructor
14 December 1916 – Returned to Jasta 9
21 January 1917 – Ordered to Reserve Officers Course for Flying Troops at Döeritz
13 February 1917 – Ordered to join newly forming Jasta 27, then forming in Flanders
10 December 1917 – Left Jasta 27 for Flieger-Beobachterschule-West
8 January 1918 – Transferred to KEST la (Kampfeinsitzerstaffel) [Home Protection Squadron] Mannheim
4 April 1918 – Transferred to Karlsruhe, joining KEST lb
2 July 1918 – Travelled to Flugplatz Lomme, near Lille, arriving on 2 July 1918.  (Jasta 40)
9 July 1918 – First flight with Jasta 40
28 September 1918 – Received the Ritterkreuz zweiter Klasse mit Schwerten des Ordens vo Zaringer Löwen from Grand Duke of Baden for third victory scored over Hagenau on 26 June while with KEST lb

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Aerial Victories of Leutnant d.R. Willy Rosenstein

Willy’s aerial victories and combat claims follow.  This list is supplemented by information concerning the identities (where known) of the pilots of these aircraft.  The names of the Allied aviators are from Frank Bailey and Christophe Coney’s The French Air Service War Chronology 1914-1918, and, Trevor Henshaw’s The Sky Their Battlefield, which were published in 2001 and 1995, respectively; over a decade after the appearance of Robert Gill’s article in the Cross and Cockade Bulletin.

Robert Gill’s analysis of Willy’s aerial victory claims follows this list.

No. 1:  21 September 1917
D.H.4
Confirmed as the 33rd victory of Jasta 27, by Kogluft Nr. 113092 dated 11 November 1917.
Possibly a Bristol F2B Fighter of No. 22 Squadron, R.F.C.  The victory occurred in the vicinity of Zillebeke Lake.

No. 2:  26 September 1917
Sopwith Single-Seater
Confirmed as the 34th victory of Jasta 27, by Kogluft Nr. 113422, dated 17 November 1917.
The victory occurred in the vicinity of Blankartsee.  The enemy aircraft was seen to crash in the flood containment area of the Blankart-See following a very hard twisting and turning fight of 15 minutes duration.

Sopwith Camel B6275, No. 70 Squadron
2 Lt. C.L. Lomax, POW
Offensive patrol, seen low near Passchendaele going southeast to Lines
Left 11:05 a.m., last seen 12:15 p.m. (Henshaw, p. 232)

No. 3:  27 September 1917
Not confirmed
This claim was denied due to deficient ground confirmation.  Ltn. Stoltenhoff was denied his claim on the same day, probably in the same fight.  No details of aircraft type, location or time have been located.

No. 4:  26 June 1918
D.H.4
Confirmed as the 3rd victory for Rosenstein and the 2nd victory of KEST lb.  Aircraft serial A8073.  Crew: 2/Lt. F. Bryan, Sgt. A. Boocock, made P.O.W.s.  Confirmed by Kogluft Nr. 126995 dated 11 July 1918.  This victory is erroneously credited to Jasta 40, as Rosenstein had transferred as the confirmation was being made.  He was awarded the Baden Order of the Zäringer Lion for this victory.

DH4 A8073, No. 55 Squadron (L.F.)
2 Lt. F.F.H. Bryan and Sgt.  A/ Boocock, both POW
Bombing Karlsruhe, seen in control south of Strassburg landing field near Saverne (Henshaw, p. 345)

No. 5:  14 July 1918
S.E.5A
Confirmed as the 4th victory for Rosenstein by Kogluft Nr. 131153, dated 31 August 1918.  The Jasta victory number is not included.  The aircraft was most likely one belonging to either No. 64 or 85 Squadrons, R.A.F. (See Text).

SE5a C6490, No. 85 Squadron
2 Lt. N.H. (?) Marshall, POW
Offensive patrol, left 8:05 a.m., seen in combat north of Estaires at 8:35 a.m.
Claimed in combat southeast of Vieux Berquin 8:35 by Leutnant C. Degelow
Claimed in combat southeast of Vieux Berquin 8:30 by Leutnant W. Rosenstein
Claimed in combat near Berquin by 8:40 Leutnant H. Gilly (Henshaw, p. 355)

No. 6:  29 September 1918
B.F.
No record of a confirmation order for this victory can be located, although it appears in the Jasta 40 records.  Rosenstein stated that “…I shot down in flames a lone flying B.F.”  No data concerning time or location.

No. 7:  3 October 1918
Spad XIII
Confirmed by Kogluft Nr. 136591, dated 6 January 1919, as the 6th personal victory for Willy Rosenstein and as the 48th victory of Jasta 40.  This was a French aircraft of Escadrille Spa 82, one of four enemy aircraft confirmed to Jasta 40 in the vicinity of Roulers.

Spad VII, Spa 82, over Roulers
Caporal Pilote Henri Jean Marie Francois Fourier (1/3/95, Entrevaux, France), KIA
Caporal Pilote Louis Charles Leon Rolland (2/24/95, Toulle, France), KIA
Caporal Pilote Edmond Pirolley (1/28/96, Marcilly et Dracy, France), KIA (Bailey and Cony, p. 311)

No. 8:  4 October 1918
Sopwith Camel
Confirmed by A.O.K. 4, Kofl. B, Nr. TC72154/51, dated 16 October 1918.  This confirmation is unusual in that the entire combat report with original notes of confirmation by Degelow and Jeschonnek, addressed to Kogluft, are present in Rosenstein’s album.  It does not appear that this paperwork ever got where it was supposed to go.  Further, the personal victory tally has been obliterated and the number “8” written over whatever was there.  It is placed in the position of the 8th victory in the album, apparently by Rosenstein.

No. 9:  7 October 1918
Sopwith Camel
No record of confirmation order can be found.  This victory is well documented by Carl Degelow, and also in the War Diary.  However, Rosenstein had placed Kogluft order for his confirmed victory of 27 October 1918 on the page for his 8th confirmed victory and then wrote that his 9th victory was not confirmed due to the end of the war.

Sopwith Camel E7176, No. 70 Squadron
2 Lt. Herbert David Lackey (formerly Royal Naval Air Service), KIA
Mrs. Elizabeth Lackey (mother), 21 Osgoode St., Ottawa, Canada
Buried at Harlebeke New British Cemetery, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium – XI,B,14
Bombing offensive patrol
Left 8 a.m., last seen near Lichtervelde
Claimed in combat at Ghent 10:30 by Leutnant C. Degelow
Claimed in combat at Ghent by Leutnant W. Rosenstein (Henshaw, p. 435)

No. 10:  27 October 1918
Sopwith Camel
Confirmed by Kogluft Nr. 137400, dated 6 January 1919, as the 7th personal victory for Rosenstein, and as the 49th victory of Jasta 40.  The unit and location are not available, although Degelow’s 28th personal victory over a Sopwith Camel occurred on the same date in the vicinity of Wynghene.

Sopwith Camel E4387, No. 204 Squadron
2 Lt. Philip Frederick Cormack, KIA
Buried at Machelen French Military Cemetery, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium
High offensive patrol, combat with 30-40 Fokker D VIIs at Saint Denis / Westrem, south of Ghent at 9 – 10 a.m.
Claimed in combat at Wynghene by Leutnant C. Degelow
Claimed in combat at Wynghene at 9:35 a.m. by Leutnant W. Rosenstein (Henshaw, p. 445)

Analysis: The Aerial Victories of Leutnant d.R. Willy Rosenstein

While Rosenstein’s first and second victories cannot be specifically identified, he did receive solid confirmation.  This was not the case with his third claim on 27 September 1917.  This denied victory has never been an issue.  He apparently accepted the deficient ground confirmation ruling without protest.  His fourth claim on 26 June 1918, while with KEST lb, is now verified as to victim, but was always a solid third confirmed victory.  His fourth confirmed victory, scored with Jasta 40 on 14 July 1918 is also a solid victory with the only debate being who shot down whom.  His fifth confirmed victory on 29 September 1918 is a bit shaky – no confirmation in hand, no details of any kind as to who, where or when – but yet it appears on the Jasta 40 list as a confirmed victory for him.  Did it appear on the Kogluft records as well?  This writer is inclined to believe that it did for Kogluft gave him written credit on 6 January 1919 for his next victory of 3 October 1918 as his sixth personal confirmed.

His seventh claim on 4 October 1918, though well documented in his own records with original combat reports, may never have reached Kogluft for unknown reasons.  In Jasta 40 records it is listed as his seventh confirmed.  His eighth claim on 7 October 1918 is not supported by written confirmation in his records by Kogluft documentation, although on that day, apparently following the action,  Degelow nominated him for the Hohenzollern Haus-orden, stating that he had eight confirmed victories.  His ninth, which he shrugged off as not being confirmed due to the end of the war was, in fact, confirmed by Kogluft as his seventh personal victory – and as the 49th victory of Jasta 40.  This is the number of official confirmed victories he is usually credited with in most accounts.  So, it appears that Rosenstein was victorious on 4 and 7 October 1918, and that these victories were not included in his tally at Kogluft.  Therefore, this writer submits to those interested that Willy Rosenstein should have received credit for at least nine confirmed victories, plus one not confirmed moving him from position 240 to new position 183 on the Ace List of German aviators in World War I.

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History does not end: The past becomes the present. 

Nearly a century had passed, and then, Willy Rosenstein once more appeared before the public.  Well, to be specific, an image of Willy appeared before the public. 

This occurred within Nikolai Müllerschoen’s above-mentioned, movie “The Red Baron”, the epilogue of which reveals the ultimate fates of the film’s protagonists: Manfred von Richtofen, Nurse Käte Otersdorf (about whom “No further records exist on her remaining life”), Captain Roy Brown, Manfred’s brother Lothar and cousin Wolfram, Werner Voss, and, Kurt Wolff.  Regardless of the film’s historical inaccuracy and contrived plot (!), all these characters are solidly historical individuals.  Obviously, they existed.

But…

…the epilogue includes another central character, who – in a film already largely and deliberately ahistorical in its presentation of events (true, the CGI depictions of aerial combat were superbly done, the aerial action having been depicted in the abrupt, “hand held” style so characteristic of contemporary films) – is revealed to the viewer to be completely fictional.

Who? 

The Jewish pilot: Friedrich Sternberg.  Tellingly, while the epilogue presents photographic images of the above-mentioned aviators, as well as Käte Otersdorf, Sternberg is not represented with the image of actor who played him, Maxim Mehmet.  Rather; strikingly, the viewer is presented with the image – the same image at the “top” of this post – of Willy Rosenstein seated upon the fuselage of his black Albatross.  This sepia-toned photo is accompanied by the following text:

DURING WW I MANY JEWISH PILOTS FOUGHT
FOR THE GERMAN EMPIRE.
MANY OF THEM WERE HIGHLY DECORATED
FIGHTER ACES.

THEY ARE REPRESENTED
BY THE FICTITIOUS CHARACTER OF
FRIEDRICH STERNBERG

You can view this “snippet” from the movie (the full film, uploaded by teo7121941, is available here) below:

This following sequence, which appears immediately after the movie’s opening scene (showing the childhood incident which allegedly inspired Manfred von Richtofen to become an aviator – well, hey, it makes a nice story) portrays von Richtofen leading a trio of pilots, as the group salutes – literally and symbolically – a fallen British aviator.  Note that while the camera fleetingly captures – very quickly! – the personal insignia on all four Albatross fighters, the very first insignia to be shown is a Magen David on Sternberg’s aircraft.

The next two clips are fraught.  Very, highly, fraught.  They depict Sternberg and his comrades engaged in aerial combat with British bombers and fighters near Ypres.  And then, Sternberg is shot down and killed.

In terms of Sternberg’s ultimate fate, let alone a bevy of minor and fleeting details which are not at all that minor (the Magen David upon Sternberg’s black Albatross, the fuselage of which is dotted with stars; the Hebrew characters painted upon the horizontal elevator of his plane; the revelation that Sternberg had been awarded the Pour le Mérite) this entire sequence is deeply symbolic and intentionally so, and in terms of actual history, more than a little ironic.     

This kind of symbolism has been manifest in other military-themed movies and literary works featuring Jewish characters.  A few examples: Sands of Iwo Jima; Objective Burma; Destination Tokyo (where the role of “Tin Can”, played by Dane Clark [Bernard Elliot Zanville], merits a blog post unto itself!); Steven Spielberg’s over-rated (like the bulk of his oeuvre, but I’ll leave that for another discussion…) Saving Private Ryan; Enemy at The Gates; James Jomes’ superb The Thin Red Line; Norman Mailer’s The Naked and The Dead; MacKinlay Kantor’s extraordinary Andersonville. 

But, I digress.  Perhaps I’ll save that topic for a future blog post.  (Posts?  There is lots of material there…)

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Robert Gill’s article concludes with a single paragraph about Willy’s son, Ernest Willy.  In its starkly enigmatic brevity this account stands in striking contrast to the information available about his father:

“The final irony was yet to come.  His son, Ernest Willy, enlisted in the South African Air Force when he was 19 year of age.  Following in his father’s footsteps, he became a fighter pilot.  He was seconded to the Royal Air Force and assigned to No. 185 Squadron in Italy.  While flying a Spitfire, this expatriot, German-born Jew was posted Missing in Action, later confirmed Killed in Action, on 2 April 1945, flying against his former countrymen.  (3)  He was 22 years of age.  This writer has attempted, without success, to obtain the details concerning the young Ernest’s combat record and his last mission.”

Robert Gill was correct.  This was the embodiment of irony; a deep and powerful irony.  But, it was even more than mere irony – as seen in conventional terms.  This was “unfair”, solidly unfair.  But, it was far more than simple unfairness – as in everyday life.  Rather, it seemed to be unjust, at an almost inexpressible, if not poetic level. 

I became curious about this, and contacted Robert Gill for information about Ernest Willy.  He replied rapidly, favorably, and with great generousity, providing me with photocopies of Ernest Willy’s Log Book, photographs, Attestation Papers, and related documents.   

That material – which has been the impetus for “this” post, about the father – has become the basis of the “next” post, about the son…

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References

First and foremost, my sincere and deep thanks to Robert B. Gill, for providing me with material about Ernest Willy Rosenstein, and, for his research into the life of Willy Rosenstein.

______________________________

Willy Rosenstein (General)

Biography of Willy Rosenstein (at Wikipedia)

Genealogy of Willy Rosenstein, by Alex Calzareth (at geni)

Genealogy of Willy Rosenstein, by Rolf Hofmann (“Family Sheet Willy Rosenstein of Stuttgart + South Africa”) (at Alemannia Judaica)

Willy Rosenstein as pilot and racing car driver (“Karriere als Pilot und Autorennfahrer”) (at Wikiwand)

German Jewish Aces (at Militarian Military History Forum)

Willy Rosenstein in his Hansa Taub (postcard) (at ansichtskarten-center)

Matzeva of Willy Rosenstein (at Jewish Photo Library)

Cross & Cockade Journal, Winter 1984 (at Flying Tiger Antiques)

Willy Rosenstein (Aerial Victories)

List of aerial victories (at The Aerodrome)

Discussion of aerial victories (at The Aerodrome)

Willy Rosenstein (Aircraft)

Willy Rosenstein’s Pfalz E.1 (Marek Mincbergr)

Willy Rosenstein’s Fokker D.VII (at Modellversium)

Jasta 40’s Fokker D.VIIs

Pheon Decals – Decal Set 48005: Jasta 40 under Degelow (at Pheon Decals)

The Red Baron (Movie)

The Red Baron (at Internet Movie Database)

The Red Baron (at Wikipedia)

The Red Baron (at Rotten Tomatoes) – Tomatometer currently stands at 20%

The Red Baron (Discussion at A.E. Larsen’s blog)

Other References

World War One Luftstreitkraefte (at Wikipedia)

Jewish Knights of the Air (German Jewish aviators in the First World War) (at Dayton Holocaust Resource Center)

Kurt Katzenstein (at Wikiwand)

Keeping Faith: A Letter from an Orthodox Jewish Soldiers in the Germany Army During the Great War (at They Were Soldiers)

Books

Bailey, Frank W., and Coney, Christophe, The French Air Service War Chronology 1914-1918 – Day-to-Day Claims and Losses by French Fighter, Bomber and Two-Seat Pilots on the Western Front, Grub Street, London, 2001

Henshaw, Trevor, The Sky Their Battlefield: Air Fighting and The Complete List of Allied Air Casualties From Enemy Action in the First War (British, Commonwealth, and United States Air Services 1914 to 1918), Grub Street, London, 1995

Theilahber, Felix, Jüdische Flieger im Weltkrieg, 1924, Verlag der Schild, Berlin.

Wait, Adam M., Jewish Flyers in the World War, Original Title “Judische Flieger im Weltktrieg” – English-Language Translation, Adam M. Wait, 1988.

Notes

(1) Rolf Hofmann lists his birthplace as Wiesbaden.

(2) 55 photographs and 10 documents.

(3) Whether Ernest Willy would have been perceived as a fellow countryman – in 1945, let alone 2018 – remains open to conjecture.