young brothers were killed there. Cut to pieces with sabers. The old man had his peiess (pious earlocks) cut off, together with his ears, and his belly ripped open...I ran away with my daughter, to save her. Look, there she is, at the third stall on the right." His eyes stream with tears as he points towards a girl standing a few feet away. She is about fifteen, oval faced, with delicate features, pale and fragile as a lily, and with most peculiar eyes. She is looking straight before her, while her hands are mechanically cutting chunks of bread from the big round loaf. There is the same dreadful expression in her eyes that I have recently seen for the first time in the faces of very young girls in pogromed cities. A look of wild terror frozen into a stare that grips at my heart. Yet, not realizing the truth, I whisper to her father, "Blind?"
"No, not blind;" he cries out. "Wish to God — no, much worse. She has been looking like that ever since the night when I ran away from our house with her.
back.
memory, and my two FASTOV THE POGROMED 211 It was a fearful night. Like wild beasts they cut and slashed and raved. I hid with my Rosele in the cellar, but we were not safe there, so we ran to the woods nearby. They caught us on the way. They took her from me and left me for dead. Look — " He takes off his hat and I see a long sword cut, only partly healed, scarring the side of his head. "They left me for dead," he repeats. "When the murderers had gone, three days later, she was found in the field and she has been like that...with that look in her eyes...she hasn't talked since...Oh, my God, why dost Thou punish me so?"
"Dear Reb Sholem, do not blaspheme," my woman guide admonishes him. "Are you the only one to suffer? You know my great loss. We all share the same fate. It has always been the fate of us Jews. We know not the ways of God, blessed be His holy name. But let us go to Reb Moishe," she says, turning to me.
Behind the counter of what was once a grocery store stands Reb Moishe. He is a middle-aged Hebrew, with an intelligent face that now bears only the memory of a kindly smile. An old resident of the town and elder in the synagogue, he knows every inhabitant and the whole history of the place. He had been one of the well-to-do men of the city, and even now he cannot resist the temptation of hospitality, so traditional with his race. Involuntarily his eyes wander to the shelves entirely bare save for a few empty bottles. The room is dingy and out of repair; the wall paper hangs down in cracked sheets, exposing the plaster, yellow with moisture. On the counter are some loaves of black bread, straw dotted, and a small tray with green onions. Reb Moishe bends over, produces a bottle of soda from under the counter, and offers the treasure to me, with a smile of benign welcome. A look of consternation spreads over the face of his wife, who 212 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH sits darning silently in the corner, as Reb Moishe shamefacedly declines the proferred payment. "No, no, I cannot do it," he says with simple dignity, but I know it as the height of sacrifice.
Learning the purpose of my visit to Fastov, Reb Moishe invites me to the street. "Come with me," he says; "I'll show you what they did to us. Though there is not much for the eyes" — he looks at me with searching gaze — "only those who lived through it can understand, and maybe" — he pauses a moment — "maybe also those who really feel with us in our great bereavement."
We step out of the store. Across is a large vacant space, its center littered with old boards and broken bricks. "That was our schoolhouse," Reb Moishe comments. "This is all that's left of it. That house on your left, with the shutters closed, it was Zalman's, our school-teacher's. They killed six there — father, mother, and four children. We found them all with their heads broken by the butts of guns. There, around the corner, the whole street — you see, every house pogromed. We have many such streets."
After a while he continues: "In this house, with the green roof, the whole family was wiped out — nine persons. The murderers set fire to it, too — you can see through the broken doors — the inside is all burned and charred. Who did it?" he repeats my question in a tone of hopelessness. "Better ask who did not? Petlura came first, then Denikin, and then the Poles, and just bands of every kind; may the black years know them. There were many of them, and it was always the same curse. We suffered from all of them, every time the town changed hands. But Denikin was the worst of all, worse even than the Poles, who hate us so. The last time the Denikins were here the pogrom lasted four days. Oh, God!"
He suddenly halts, throwing up his hands. "Oh, you FASTOV THE POGROMED 213 Americans, you who live in safety, do you know what it means, four days! Four long, terrible days, and still more terrible nights, four days and four nights and no let-up in the butchery. The cries, the shrieks, those piercing shrieks of women seeing their babies torn limb from limb before their very eyes...I hear them now...It freezes my blood with horror...It drives me mad...Those sights...The bloody mass of flesh that was once my own child, my lovely Mirele...She was only five years old." He breaks down. Leaning against the wall, his body shakes with sobs.
Soon he recovers himself. "Here we are in the center of the worst pogromed part," he continues. "Forgive my weakness; I can't speak of it with dry eyes...There is the synagogue. We Jews sought safety in it. The Commander told us to. His name? May evil be as strange to me as his dark name. One of Denikin's generals; the Commander, that's what he was called. His men were mad with blood lust when there was nothing more to rob. You know, the sol- diers and peasants think there is gold to be found in every Jewish home. This was once a prosperous city, but the rich men that did business with us lived in Kiev and Kharkov. The Jews here were just making a living, with a few of them comfortably off. Well, the many pogroms long ago robbed them of all they had, ruined their business, and despoiled their homes. Still, they lived somehow. You know how it is with the Jew — he is used to mistreatment, he tries to make the best of it. But Denikin's soldiers — oh, it was Gehenna let loose. They went wild when they found nothing to take, and they destroyed what they didn't want. That was the first two days. But with the third began the killing, mostly with swords and bayonets. On the third day the Commander ordered us to take refuge in the synagogue. He promised us safety, and 2i 4 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH we brought our wives and children there. They put a guard at the door, to protect us, the Commander said. It was a trap. At night the soldiers came; all the hooligans of the town were with them, too. They came and demanded our gold. They would not believe we had none. They searched the Holy Scrolls, they tore them and trampled upon them. Some of us could not look quietly on that awful desecration. We pro- tested. And then began the butchery. The horror, oh, the horror of it...The women beaten, as- saulted, the men cut down with sabers...Some of us broke through the guard at the door, and we ran into the streets. Like hounds of hell, they followed us, slashing, killing, and hunting us from house to house. For days afterwards the streets were littered with the killed and maimed. They would not let us approach our dead. They would not permit us to bury them or to help the wounded who were groaning in their misery, begging for death...Not a glass of water could we give them...They shot anyone coming near...The famished dogs of the whole neighborhood came; they smelt prey. I saw them tear off limbs from the dead, from the helpless wounded...They fed on the living...on our brothers..."
He broke down again. "The dogs fed on them...fed on them..." he repeats amid sobs.
Someone approaches us. It is the doctor who had ministered to the sick and wounded after the last pogrom was over. He looks the typical Russian of the intelligentsia, the stamp of the idealist and student engraved upon him. He walks with a heavy limp, and. his quick eye catches my unvoiced question. "A me- mento of those days," he says, attempting a smile. "It troubles me a good deal and handicaps my work considerably," he adds. "There are many sick people and I am on my feet all day. There are no convey- ances — they took away all the horses and cattle. I am FASTOV THE POGROMED 215 just on my way now to poor Fanya, one of my hopeless patients. No, no, good man, it's no use your visiting her," he waives aside my request to accompany him. "It is like many others here; a terrible but common case. She was a nurse, taking care of a paralytic young girl. They occupied a room on the second floor of.a house nearby. On the first floor soldiers were quar- tered. When the pogrom began the soldiers kept the paralytic and her nurse prisoners. What happened there no one will ever know...When the soldiers had at last gone we had to use a ladder to get to the girls' room. The brutes had covered the stairs with human excrement — it was impossible to approach. When we got to the two girls, the paralytic was dead in the arms of the nurse, and the latter a raving maniac. No, no; it's no use your seeing her."
"Doctor," says Reb Moishe, "why don't you tell our American friend how you got crippled? He should hear everything."
"Oh, that is not important, Reb Moishe. We have so many worse things." Upon my insisting, he con- tinues: "Well, it is not a long story. I was shot as I approached a wounded man lying in the street. It was dark, and as I was passing by I heard someone moan. I had just stepped off the sidewalk when I was shot. It was the night of the synagogue pogrom. But my mishap, man — it's nothing when you think of the nightmare in the warehouse."
"The warehouse?" I asked. "What happened there?"
"The worst you can imagine," the doctor replies. '"Those scenes no human power can describe. It wasn't murder there — only a few were killed in the warehouse. It was the women, the girls, even chil- dren...When the soldiers pogromed the syna- gogue, many of the women succeeded in gaining the street. As if by some instinct they collected afterwards 2l6 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH in the warehouse — a big outhouse that had not been used for many years. Where else were the women to go? It was too dangerous at home; the mob was searching for the men who had escaped from the in their homes, wherever found. So the women and girls gathered in the warehouse. It was late at night and the place was dark and still. They feared to breathe, almost, lest their hiding-place be discovered by the hooligans. During the night more of the women folk and some of their men also found their way to the warehouse. There they all lay, huddled on the floor, in dead silence. The cries and shrieks from the street reached them, but they were helpless and every moment they feared discovery. How it happened we don't know, but some soldiers did find them. There was no pogrom there, in the ordinary sense. There was worse. The Commander himself gave orders that a cordon of soldiers be stationed at the warehouse, that no pogrom was to be made, and that no one be permitted to leave without his permission. At first we did not understand the meaning of it, but the terrible truth soon dawned on us. On the second night several officers arrived, accompanied by a strong detachment, all mounted and carrying lanterns. By their light they peered into the faces of the women. They selected five of the most beautiful girls, dragged them out and rode away with them. They came again and again that night...They came every night, always with their lanterns. First the youngest were taken, girls of fifteen and twelve, even as young as eight. Then they took the older ones and the married women. Only the very old were left. There were over 400 women and girls in the warehouse, and most of them were taken away. Some of them never returned alive; many were later found dead on the roads. Others were abandoned along the route of the withdrawing army...they street, FASTOV THE POGROMED 217 returned days, weeks later...sick, tortured, every- one of them infected with terrible diseases."
The doctor pauses, then takes me aside. "Can an outsider realize the whole depth of our misfortune?" he asks. "How many pogroms we have suffered! The last one, by Denikin, continued eight days. Think of it, eight days! Over ten thousand of our people were slaughtered; three thousand died from exposure and wounds." Glancing toward Reb Moishe, he adds in a hoarse whisper: "There is not a woman or girl above the age of ten in our city who has not been outraged. Some of them four, five, as high as fourteen times...You said you were about to go to Kiev. In the City Hospital there you will find seven children, girls under thirteen, that we succeeded in placing there for medical treatment, mostly surgical. Everyone of those girls has been outraged six and more times. Tell America about it — will it still remain silent?"
CHAPTER XXIX KIEV CHAPTER XXIX KIEV The Krestchatik, Kiev's main thoroughfare, pulsates with intense life. Straight as an arrow it lies before me, a magnificent broad avenue stretching far into the distance and finally disappearing in the superb Kupet- chesky Park, formerly the pride of the city. Ancient, the storms of time and human strife defying, Kiev stands picturesquely beautiful, a radiant mosaic of iri- descent foliage, golden cathedrals and monasteries of exotic architecture, and green-clad mountains towering on the banks of the Dnieper flowing majestically below.
Recent days revived the bloody scenes the old city had witnessed in the centuries past, when Mongol and Tartar, Cossack, Pole, and fierce native tribes had fought for its possession. But more sanguinary and ferocious have been the struggles of yesterday. For- eign armies of occupation, German, Magyar, and Aus- trian, native gaidamaki, Poles, Russians — each turned the ancient city into a shamble. Skoropadsky, Pet- lura, Denikin, like the savage atamans of Gogol's tales, have vied with each other in filling the streams that crimson the Dnieper in these the darkest days of Russia.
Incredible vitality of man! Exasperating, yet blessed brevity of human memory! Today the city looks bright and peaceful — forgotten is the slaughter, forgotten the sacrifices of yesterday.
The streets, full of movement and color, contrast strikingly with the sickly exhaustion of northern cities. Stores and restaurants are open, and the bakeries dis- play appetizing pirozhniye, the sweets so dear to the 218 KIEV Russian heart. Most of the business signs are still in their accustomed places, some in Russian, others in the Ukrainian language, the latter predominating since the famous decree of Skoropadsky when overnight all shingles had to be "Ukrainianized." The boulevards are alive with people, the women larger and less beau- tiful than in Kharkov, the men stolid, heavy, unpre- possessing.
It is a month since the Poles left the city: the Bol- sheviki have not yet had time to establish completely their regime. But the reports of Polish destruction, so industriously circulated in Moscow, prove baseless. Little damage has been done by the enemy, except the burning of some railroad bridges on the outskirts of the city. The famous Sofiysky Cathedral and the Michailovsky Monastery are undisturbed in their im- posing splendor. Without reason did Tchicherin pro- test to the world against "the unheard-of vandalism" toward those gems of old architecture.
The Soviet institutions present the familiar picture of Moscow pattern: gatherings of worn, tired people, looking hungry and apathetic. Typical and sad. The corridors and offices are crowded with applicants seek- ing permission to do or to be exempt from doing this or that. The labyrinth of new decrees is so intricate, the officials prefer the easier way of solving perplexing problems by "revolutionary method," on their "con- science," generally to the dissatisfaction of the peti- tioners.
Long lines are everywhere, and much writing and handling of "papers" and documents by Sovietsky barishni (young ladies) in high-heeled shoes, that swarm in every office. They puff at cigarettes and animatedly discuss the advantages of certain bureaus as measured by the quantity of the pyock issued, the symbol of Soviet existence. Workers and peasants, their heads bared, approach the long tables. Respect- 22o THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH fully, even servilely, they seek information, plead for an "order" for clothing, or a "ticket" for boots. "I don't know," "In the next office," "Come tomorrow," is the usual reply. There are protests and lamenta- tions, and begging for attention and advice. Occasion- ally someone in the line, after days of fruitless effort, loses his temper, and a string of true Russian curses fills the room, rising above the noise and the smoke. But when the commissar hastily enters, belated from the conference of the Party Committee, the hubbub subsides, and the barishni appear busy at their tasks. He has a worn and worried look: his desk is piled with papers awaiting his attention, and within an hour he is expected at another session. Lucky applicant that gets a hearing; happy if action is taken on his. case.
The industries are at low ebb, mainly because of the lack of raw material and coal. The decree militarizing labor is being applied with great severity; the toilers in the shops and factories are rigidly bound to their places of employment. But the machinery has been neglected, most of it is out of repair, and there is a scarcity of artisans capable of putting it in order. The men are at their posts, pretending to work, but in reality idling or engaged in the stealthy manufacture of cigarette lighters, keys, locks, and other objects for personal use or private sale.
Many of the factories are entirely closed; others are operating with a minimum output. The sugar re- fineries, the most important industry of the Southeast, are working at a great deficit. Because of the total devaluation of Soviet money the State is compelled to pay its employees with products, chiefly with sugar from the old reserves. In search of documents for the Museum, I gather official statistics showing that to produce one pood (about 40 lbs.) of sugar, the gov- ernment expends thirty-five, often even fifty-five pounds KIEV 221 of the old sugar. The officials realize the extreme seri- ousness of the situation, but feel themselves helpless. Some skeptically, others with characteristic racial fatality, trudge on in the treadmill.
In the civil and military departments there is feverish activity, but sadly unorganized. Almost every branch is working independently, without relation to other Soviet institutions, frequently in entire ignorance and even in opposition to the policies and measures of the other executive bodies. Curious incidents result. Thus the Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Executive Committee has sent a telegraphic request to all Soviet the Secretary of the Party has at the same time issued an order against us, condemning our Mission as an attempt to deprive Ukraina of its historic documents, and threatening to confiscate the material we have collected.
The Soviet of Labor Unions occupies the huge build- ing on the Krestchatik which was formerly the Hotel Savoy. In 191 8 and 19 19 that body played a most important role, its work covering the whole field of proletarian interests and its authority based on the expressed will of the industrial masses. But gradually the Soviet has been deprived of power, the government taking over its essential functions, and turning the unions into executive and administrative branches of the State machinery. The elective principle has been abolished and replaced by Communist appointment.
The labor headquarters are in great confusion. As in Kharkov, the entire Soviet and most of the managing boards of the locals have been recently "liquidated" as Menshevik or unsympathetic to the Communists, and new officials appointed by Moscow. The same atmos- phere of suppressed nervousness is sensed in the unions as in the other government institutions. The Bolshe- viki do not feel secure in the city, and there are stubborn institutions 222 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH rumors of Communist reverses on the Polish front, of Wrangel advancing from the Crimea, of Odessa being taken by the Whites, and of Makhno activity in the Kiev province.
In the course of my work I come in touch with T, the Ukrainian Communist, whom I had met last winter in the Kharitonensky as a member of the delegation that had come to Moscow to plead for greater independence and self-determination for the Ukraina. He is of middle age, a university graduate and revolutionist repeatedly imprisoned under the Ro- manov regime. An active borodbist (Left Social Revo- lutionist of the Ukraina), he submitted to discipline when his party joined the Communists.
But he has "private opinions" which, long sup- pressed, seek relief. "I don't mind discussing these questions with you" he remarks, with an emphasis on the pronoun, "though I know that you are not a Communist — — " "But I am," I interrupt; "not indeed a Bolshevik; nor a Governmentalist, but a free, Anarchist Com- munist."
"Not our kind of Communist. Still, you are an old revolutionist. I heard a good deal about you in Moscow, and I can call you comrade. I disagree with you, of course, but I also disagree with the policies of my Party. The Ukraina is not Russia — it's a great mistake for 'the center' to treat us as if we were. We could win the people to our side by having greater local autonomy and more independence. Our Ukrai- nian Party has used every effort to convince Moscow in this matter, but without result. We are a republic in name only; in reality we are just a Russian province."
"Do you want entire separation?"
"No. We want to be federated with R. S. F. S. R M but not subject. We are as good Communists as they in Moscow, but our influence here would be much KIEV 223 greater were we left free to act. We know the con- ditions and needs of the people better than those who sit in the Kremlin. Take, for instance, the recent wholesale suspension of the union management. It has antagonized the entire labor element against us. The same is happening in the other Soviet institu- tions. Only yesterday a chauffeur complained to me about our 'Moscow methods.' The man had been or- dered to the front, but his wife died recently, leaving a paralytic boy on his hands. He has been trying to get his child into some hospital or home, but his pe- tition, in the Ukrainian language, has been returned to him with the order to 'write it in Russian.' And that after two weeks of waiting! Now the man is to join his regiment within two days. Do you wonder that the people hate us? The 'center' ignores our sug- gestions, and we are powerless."
Criticism of Moscow is general among the Ukrai- nian Communists. Often, to my surprise and conster- nation, I detect obvious anti-Semitism in their resent- ment of Kremlin domination. The anecdotes and puns circulating in Soviet institutions are tinged with this spirit, though some do not lack wit. Among the people at large hatred of the Jew is intense, though its active expression is held in abeyance. Yet not unfrequent are incidents such as happened this morning in the Podol, the proletarian district of the city, where a man ran amuck in the market, knife in hand, shouting: "Kill the Jews, save Russia I" He stabbed several persons before he was overpowered. It is said that the man was crazed by hunger and illness, but his sentiments are unfortunately too popular to require such an expla- nation.
Kiev, in the heart of the former ghetto, has lately still more increased its Hebrew population, come to the larger city in the hope of finding comparative safety from the continual wave of pogroms which swept the 224 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH province since 19 17. Whoever the changing political masters — with the sole exception of the Bolsheviki — the Jew was always the first victim, the eternal martyr. It is the concurrence of opinion that Denikin and the Poles were the most brutal and ruthless. Under the latter even Kiev was not free from anti-Semitic ex- cesses, and in the Podol pogroms took place repeatedly.
In the city library, in a recent publication by a man of great literary and intellectual attainments, I read: "Pogroms are sad, but if that is the only way to get rid of the Bolsheviki, then we must have pogroms."
CHAPTER XXX IN VARIOUS WALKS By the aid of R, the secretary of an important labor union, I have gathered much valuable material for the Expedition. R is a Menshevik who has in some unexplained manner escaped the recent "clean- ing process." His known popularity among the work- ers, he believes, has saved him. "The Bolsheviki are keeping an eye on me, but they have left me alone — so far," he said significantly.
Familiar with the city, its museums, libraries, and archives, R has been a great help in my quest for data and documents. Much that is valuable has been lost, and still more has been destroyed by the workers themselves, in the interests of their safety, at the time of German occupation and White Terror. But a considerable part of the labor archives has been preserved, sufficient to reconstruct the history of the heroic struggle of the unions since their inception and throughout the stormy days of revolution and civil war. All through the Mensheviki played the role of the intellectual leaders, with the Bolsheviki and An- archists as the revolutionary inspiration of the workers.
The headquarters of the Labor Soviet have some- how become the depository of a strange documentary mixture. Police and gendarme records, the minutes of Duma sessions, and financial statistics have found their way there, only to be forgotten. By a curious chance the first Universal of Petlura, a rare document containing the original declaration of principles and aims by the Ukrainian national democracy, has been discovered by me in a neglected drawer. A Com- 325 226 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH munist official claims it as his "personal possession," with which, however, he is willing to part for a con- sideration. In view of the large price demanded, the matter has now become a subject of correspondence with the Museum.
In Menshevik circles feeling against the Bolsheviki is very bitter. It is the general sentiment among them that the Communists, formerly Social Democrats, have betrayed Marx and discredited Socialism. "Asiatic revolutionists," R calls them. There is no dif- ference between Trotsky and the hangman Stolypin, he asserts; their methods are identical. Indeed, there was more political life under Nicholas II than there is today. The Bolsheviki, alleged Marxists, think by decrees and terror to alter the immutable law of social evolution; to skip several steps at once, as it were, on the ladder of progress. The February Revolution was essentially bourgeois, but Lenin attempted to turn it by the violence of an insignificant minority into a social revolution. The complete debacle of all hopes is the result. The Communists, R believes, cannot last much longer. Russia is on the verge of utter economic collapse. The old food reserves are exhausted; pro- duction has almost ceased. Militarization of toil has failed. Trotsky's calculations of the progressive in- crease of the output on the "labor front" have been exploded like Bolshevik prophecies of world revolu- tion. The factory is not a battlefield. Converting the country into a camp of forced labor is not conducive to creative effort. It has divided the people into slaves and slave drivers, and created a powerful class of Soviet bureaucrats. Most significant of all, it has turned even the more advanced workers against the Communists. Now the Bolsheviki can count neither on the peasant nor on the proletariat; the whole coun- try is against them. But for the stupid policy of the Allies, they would have been swept away long ago.
* IN VARIOUS WALKS The blockade and invasions have played into their hands. The Bolsheviki need war to keep them in power; the present Polish campaign suits them splen- didly. But it is the last Communist straw. It will break, and the bloody Bolshevik experiment will come to an end. "History will write them down as the arch-enemies of the Revolution," R concluded emphatically.
Friday evening. — On the dining table at the home of Reb Zakhare, the old Zionist, burn three candles orthodoxically blessed by the house-wife. The whole family are gathered for the festive occasion. But the traditional soup and meat are absent: herring and kasha are being served, and small chunks of Khale, the Sabbath bread, now only partly of wheat. Besides the parents, two daughters and a son of eighteen are present. The oldest boy — "Yankel was his name," Reb Zakhare says with a heavy sigh. "He'd now be twenty-three, his memory be blessed" — was killed in the pogrom the Denikin men had made just before they finally evacuated the city. He sought to defend his sister — the youngest, then only fifteen. Together they were visiting a friend in the Podol when the mob broke into the street, sacking every house, pillaging, and murdering.
The old lady sits in the corner crying quietly. The look of frozen terror, which I have seen often lately, is in the eyes of the girls. The young man steps over to his mother and gently speaks to her. True Zionists, the family converse in Old Hebrew, making an evident concession in addressing me in Yiddish.
"At least you are free from pogroms under the Bolsheviki," I remark.
"In a certain sense," the old man assents; "but it is the Bolsheviki who are responsible for pogroms. Yes, yes, we had them under the Tsar also," he in- 228 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH terrupts my protest, "but they were nothing like those we have had since. Hatred against us has increased. To the gentiles a Bolshevik now means a Jew; a com- missar is a Zhid (opprobrious term for the Jew), and every Hebrew is held responsible for the murders of the Tcheka. I have lived all my life in the ghetto, and I have seen pogroms in the years past, but never such terrible things as since the. Bolsheviki got into Moscow."
"But they have made no pogroms," I insist.
"They also hate the Jew. |We are always the vic- tims. Under the Communists we have no violent mob pogroms; at least I have not heard of any. But we have the 'quiet pogroms,' the systematic destruction of all that is dearest to us — of our traditions, customs, and culture. They are killing us as a nation. I don't know but what that is the worst pogrom," he adds bitterly.
After a while he takes up the subject again: "Some foolish Jews are proud that our people are in the government, and that Trotsky is war minister.
As if Trotsky and such others are Jews! What good is it all, I ask, when our nation must suffer as before, and more?"
"The Jews have been made the political and social equals of gentiles," I suggest.
"Equals in what? In misery and corruption. But even there we are not equal. The Jew has more to bear than the others. We are not fit for the factory — we were always business men, traders, and now we have been ruined entirely. They have sown corruption in our youth who now think only of power; or to join the Tcheka for gain. That was never before. They are destroying the dream of Palestine, our true home; they are suppressing every effort to educate our chil- dren in the proper Jewish spirit."
IN VARIOUS WALKS 229 In the Kulturliga gather Hebrew writers, poets, and teachers, most of them members of the Volkspartei when that political party was represented in the Rada by its Minister of Jewish Affairs. Formerly the League was a powerful organization, with 230 branches throughout the South, doing cultural work among its co-religionists. The institution had much to suffer