The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1882-02-12
JEW-BAITING IN RUSSIA.
Horrible and Barbarous Treatment
Of an Unfortunate People.

Hebrews IN Russia CdhuOG 1dII W
excite the compassion and lndigna-
ton of the English-speaking world.
The Pail Mall Gazette has given
startling emphasis to the meager
references made in the officially re-
vised dispatches from st. Petersburg
| to the Tiotous disturbances of the
last nine months, and its scathlng
invectives are fully justified by the
details furnished by correspond
ent Of the Times (London.) It is
most hideous record of rapine, lust
and inhumanity. If the Turkish
butchers in Bulgaria were more
bloodthirsty and barbarOus, the Rus
sian mobs are every whit as cruel
and debased, swayed as they have
been by a passionate hatred of the
Jews which is distinctiYely medieval
in spirit. Moreover the authorities
have not only been wholly as Suplne
as the Turkish government, but
they have openly abetted and Off
cially justified these hateful and
frenzied outbreaks of savagery and
fanaticism. The signal for these
atrocities was given a few weeks
after the assassination of the Car.
AT Elizabethgrad, town in South
Russia, where the Jewish cOmmu-
nifty formed at least third Of the
population, a..mob, having sacked
wine shop and become infamed with
liquor, attacked the synagogue.
For forty-eight hours the rioters re-
NAMED in possession of the Jewish
quarter, the soldiers who were called
out to suppress the revolt joining
heartily in the work of destruction,
pillage and lust. AS many as 100
shops and warehouses and 500 houses
were demolished, the losses of the
victims being estimated at 81 100000.
This was the first outbreak. Itwas
followed in week by riots in
Smielo and Kieff, where the troops
and police again supported
the mob, participating, fully
in this double assault upon
property and virtue. At Kieff the
attack was deliberately announced
i'll advance, and when the governor
was called upon to protect 10000
Hebrew residents Of the city, he re-
fused to give his soldiers any trou-
BILE for the sake of a pack of Jews"
The consequence was that 1000 of
the hated race were left without
shelter, and in the sight of hus-
bands and fathers married women
and young girls were made the vic
tins Of the most brutal assaults.
From this time until the end of the
year there was scarcely a town in
southern or southwestern Russia
where similar scenes were not en-
acted. AS many as leo villages and
towns were at different times dur
ing eight months at the mercy of
besotted Tabble. The frenzy spread
from town to country until it
reached the pettiest hamlet where
there was single Jew with little
ready money to lend. 1t finally
famed out in the ancient
capital during Christmas week,
when an alarm of fire was
raised simultaneously in two syna-
gogues, and a thousand houses and
shops were plundered and de-
strOyed. Space will not permit US
to illustrate adequately the cruel
ties and indignities to which these
wTetched victims of persecution
were exposed, much less to cata-
logue the horrors by naming the
places and reckoning the losses in
life and property that were sus-
tanned. Many Of the incidents are
heartrending and revolving. We
read of a heartless mob breaking
into a house, and finding neither
JeWesses nor treasure in the empty
rooms, sullenly Wreaking its disap-
pOintment on a baby, which is
hurled out of a window and falls
dead at the feet of a platoon of Cos
sacks. Then follows a recital of an
attack upon Jewish congregation,
the women who escaped a worse
fate in the synagogue being driven
into the river and forced to drown
themselves. A mob admitted to
Hebrew inn-keeper's wine cellars
ends by cutting the Threats of his
wife and six daughters; child
crouching in a ditch sees
a band of rufians murder
its mother and set fire to the
house; an inn-keeper is cooped in
one of his empty wine barrels and
cast into the Dneiper; men, women
and children are roasted alive; a
father defending his daughter from
stairway to root is hurled to the
pavement, and women who have
been enYious of the silks and satins
which wealthy Jewesses have
Haunted before their eyes, outrival
the hags Of the Paris commune in
malevOlence and shamelessneSs. In
thousand ways the vengeance of
an ignorant peasantry and a de-
based populace has been wreaked.
without regard to age or sex, until
thousands on thousands of house
holds have been reduced to shame
and beggary. The Russian authori-
ties nave, in almost every instance.
openly encouraged the rioters, and
have only interviewed with any
energy when the riot was three
days old and the mob had |
exhauS ted its res ources of Wanton
cruelty and barbarous a rocity. The |
attacks have invariably been
planned In advance, Saints dav and |
Sundays being generally chosen. and |
wooden crosses being sometimes
erected before the doors of Chris
tlanS as a sign that thav oo,,Id bo !