AJC Blaustein Report - August 2002

 

American Jewish Committee

Anti-Semitism As Policy: 
Historical Documents

The following items are excerpted from the supplement to "Antisemitism: An Assault on Human Rights," by Anthony Julius, Robert S. Rifkind, Jeffrey Weill and Felice D. Gaer, prepared by the American Jewish Committee's Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, for submission to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.  While the full report supplement catalogues anti-Semitic measures worldwide, these excerpts deal specifically with the territories that would become known as the Soviet Union (USSR) and also cover the period of Nazi occupation.

From the Blaustein report:

"A prevailing theme of the attached paper is that Jews throughout history have been perceived of and treated as a perpetual outsider and a danger to the societies in which they live. While the intensity of antisemitism has at times subsided, history teaches that it always returns as well. One compelling proof of the Jew’s pariah status throughout history is offered by official antisemitic state policies, which entrench discrimination and foster prejudice. What follows, in chronological order, is a sampling of antisemitic laws edicts, legal decisions, papal rulings, and other examples of state policy that have been promulgated over the last 2,000 years. They demonstrate the persistence of official antisemitism throughout the world and the need for efforts to eradicate it."

1807: Jews in Rural Areas (Russia)
1835: Pale of Settlement (Russia)
1844: Motive for Jewish Schools (Russia)
1882: The "May Laws" (Russia)
1882: Military Discrimination (Russia)
Late 19th Century: Chronology of Anti-Semitic Laws (Russia)
1941: Nazi Forced Labor ("Eastern Territories")
1941: Nazi Directives ("Ostland")
1943: Nazi Liquidation of Ghettos ("Ostland")
1949-53: Purges of Jewish Communal Leaders (USSR)
1952-53: The "Doctors' Plot" (USSR)
1959: Measures Against Synagogues (Ukraine)
1971-72: Denial of Teaching of Hebrew (USSR)
1997: Blood Libel "Documentary" (Belarus)

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A Russian Statute Concerning Jews in Rural Areas (1807)
One of many Russian laws that limited Jews' economic options.

Beginning with January 1, 1807, in the Governments of Astrakhan and Caucasia, also in those of Little Russia and new Russia, and, beginning with January 1, 1808, in the other Governments, no one among the Jews in any village or hamlet shall be permitted to hold any leases on land, to keep taverns, saloons, or inns, whether under his own name or under a strange name, or to sell wine in them, or even to live in them under any pretext whatever, except when passing through.  

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Delineation of the Pale of Settlement (April 1835)
In 1791, Catherine the Great issued a decree barring Jews from certain areas in the Russian Empire. The area in which Jews were allowed to live became known as the Pale of Settlement. Nicholas I officially delineated the Pale of Settlement in April 1835. It was abolished in 1917.

3. A permanent residence is permitted to the Jews; (a) In the provinces: Grodno, Vilna, Volhynia, Podolia, Minsk, Ekaterinoslav. (b) In the districts: Bessarabia, Bialystok.

4. In addition to the provinces and districts listed in the preceding section, a permanent residence is permitted to the Jews, with the following restrictions: (a) in Kiev province, with the exception of the provincial capital, Kiev; (b) in Kherson province, with the exception of the city of Nikolaev; (c) in Tavaria province, with the exception of the city of Sebatopol; (d) in the Mogilev and Vitebsk provinces, except in the villages; (e) in Chernigov and Poltava provinces, but not within the government and Cossack villages, where the expulsion of the Jews has already been completed; (f) in Courland province permanent residence is permitted only to those Jews who have been registered until the present date with their families in census lists. Entry for the purpose of settlement is forbidden to Jews from other provinces; (g) in Lithland province, in the city of Riga and the suburb Shlok, with the same restrictions as those applying in Courland province...

11. Jews who have gone abroad without a legal exit-permit are deprived of Russian citizenship and not permitted to return to Russia.

12. Within the general area of settlement and in every place where the Jews are permitted permanent residence, they are allowed not only to move from place to place and to settle in accordance with the general regulations, but also to acquire real estate of all kinds with the exception of inhabited estates, the ownership of which is strictly forbidden to Jews...

23. Every Jew must be registered according to the law in one of the legal estates of the realm. Any Jew not complying with this regulation will be treated as a vagrant.

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Motive for Establishing Jewish Schools (1844)
This excerpt from a memorandum accompanied a decree that established Jewish schools in Russia.

The purpose of educating the Jews is to bring about their gradual merging with the Christian nationalities, and to uproot those superstitions and harmful prejudices which are instilled by the teachings of the Talmud.  

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The "May Laws" (Russia, May 3, 1882)
A two-year spate of pogroms began in Russia in 1881. Alexander III, following the policy of "isolation and assimilation," enacted the May Laws.

1. As a temporary measure and until the revision of the laws regulating their status, Jews are forbidden to settle hereafter outside of cities and towns. Exception is made with regard to Jewish villages already in existence where the Jews are engaged in agriculture.

2. Until further order all contracts for the mortgaging or renting of real estate situated outside of cities and towns to a Jew, shall be of no effect. Equally void is any power of attorney granted to a Jew for the administration or disposition of property of the above-indicated nature.

3. Jews are forbidden to do business on Sundays and Christian holidays; the laws compelling Christians to close their places of business on those days will be applied to Jewish places of business.

4. The above measures are applicable only in the governments situated within the pale of settlement.

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Discrimination in the Russian military (1882)
The Tsarist Minister of War issued the following regulation to decrease the number of Jewish doctors in the military because doctors possessed the rights of army officers, a privilege otherwise unattainable for Jews.

First, to limit the number of Jewish physicians...in the Military Department to five percent of the general number of medical men. Second, to stop appointing Jews on medical service in the military districts of Western Russia, and to transfer the surplus over and above five percent to the Eastern districts.

Third, to appoint Jewish physicians only in those contingents of the army in which the budget calls for at least two physicians, with the proviso that the second physician must be a Christian.

It is necessary to stop the constant growth of the number of physicians of the Mosaic [Jewish] persuasion in the Military Department, in view of their deficient conscientiousness in discharging their duties and their unfavorable influence upon the sanitary service in the army.

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Chronology of Antisemitic Laws in Russia (Late 19th C.)
The late nineteenth century brought antisemitic laws to Russia under Alexander III and his successor, Nicholas II.

1882 An order by the Governor-General of St. Petersburg shut down the business of fourteen apothecaries.

1886 A Senatorial decision set forth that no Jew could be elected to a vacancy on the board of an orphan asylum.

1886 A circular of the Minister of Finance and a Senatorial decree introduced rigorous restrictions concerning Jews engaged in the liquor traffic, permitting them to sell liquor only from their own homes and owned property.

1887 A Senatorial resolution stated that Jews who graduated from a university outside Russia do not belong to the privileged class possessing the universal right of residence by virtue of their diplomas, and therefore must not settle outside the Pale of Settlement.

1887 An Imperial sanction prohibited Jews from settling in Finland.

1889 Jews must obtain a special permit from the Minister of Justice to be elected to the Bar.

1891 An order forbade non-Christians from acquiring real estate in the provinces of Akmolinski, Semirietchensk, Uralsk and Turgai.

1892 In accordance with a proposal of the Imperial Council, the mining industry in Turkestan was closed to Jews.

1894 The Minister of the Interior decreed that Jews that have graduated from a veterinary college are no longer to be admitted to the service of the State.

1895 A Senatorial decision asserted that rabbis possess no right of residence beyond the Pale of Settlement.

1895 A circular of the Minister of War instructed the Cossack authorities in the Caucasus and the Don Territory that Jews visiting the Don, Kuban and Terek provinces for the sake of the medicinal waters are to be turned back.  

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Regulation on the Introduction of Forced Labor of the Jewish Population (August 16, 1941)
Pursuant to Article 8 of the Fuehrer’s edict on the Admininistration of the newly occupied Eastern Territories of July 17, 1941, I order the following:

Article I:
Male and female Jews aged from their completed 14th to completed 60th year, residing in the newly occupied Eastern Territories, are liable for Forced Labor. The Jews will be collected in Forced Labor groups for this purpose.

Article II:
1) Any person evading Forced Labor will be sent to prison with hard labor.
2) In the event of several persons conspiring to avoid Forced Labor, or in other especially grave cases, the death penalty may be imposed.
3) Cases will be judged by the Special Courts. . .
-The Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, signed Rosenberg  

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Directives by Lohse Concerning the Jews of Ostland, (August 13, 1941)
Ostland was one of the two administrative units of the German civil administration in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, headed by Alfred Rosenberg, as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories; the other was Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Ostland included the three Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — as well as western Belorussia and the western Minsk district in Soviet Belorussia.

The Reichskommissar for Ostland
Secret!

Provisional Directives for the treatment of Jews in the area of the Reichskommissariat Ostland...

I.a. For the time being only such Jews who are citizens of the German Reich, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, of the former Republics of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, of the U.S.S.R. or of its component states, or stateless Jews, will be subject to these directives.

I.b. Other Jews of foreign citizenship, Mishlinge, and spouses of Jews who do not wish to share the fate of the Jewish spouses will be denied permission to leave the area of the R.K. Ostland as it is a military area. They are to be kept under surveillance. In addition they may be subjected to the following [measures] among others: Obligation to report daily, a ban on moving [from their place of residence], assignment to a specific dwelling, a ban on leaving the city area, limitations on moving about. If necessary they may be taken into police custody until a further decision is made...

IV. The Generalkommissar in whose areas a civil administration has been introduced will provide immediately for the following...

b) It will be decreed that Jews identify themselves by the wearing of constantly visible yellow six-cornered stars, at least 10cms across, on the left side of the chest and in the center of the back.

c) The following is forbidden to Jews:
1. To move from their locality or change their place of residence without the permission of the Gebietskommissar or Stadtskommissar.
2. The use of sidewalks, public transportation and automobiles.
3. The use of recreational facilities and institutions serving the public (resort areas and bathing facilities, parks and open spaces, playgrounds and athletic fields). 4. To attend theaters or movie houses, libraries or museums.
5. To attend schools of any type.
6. To possess automobiles or radios.
7. [Kosher] slaughtering.

d) Jewish doctors and dentists may treat or advise Jewish patients only. Where ghettos or camps are set up they will be distributed through them for the care of the inmates. Jewish druggists are permitted to practice their profession only in ghettos and camps, according to need. Drugstores previously managed by Jews are to be transferred, under trusteeship, to Aryan druggists.
Jewish veterinarians are forbidden to practice their profession.

e) Jews are forbidden the exercise of the professions and occupations listed below:
1. Attorney-at-law...
2. Banking, money-changing and pawnbroking.
3. Middleman and agents.
4. Trade in real estate.
5. Traveling peddlers.

f) The following is decreed for the handling of Jewish property:
1) General: The property of the Jewish population is to be confiscated and placed in safekeeping...
2) Compulsory Registration: All Jewish property is to be registered.
3) Compulsory Surrender: Jewish property is to be surrendered on special demand. The demand may be made by general proclamation or by order to certain individuals...

V. The following further measures are to be strived for vigorously, with due consideration for local, and particularly economic conditions.
a) The countryside is to be cleansed of Jews.
b) The Jews are to be removed from all trade, and especially from trade in agricultural products and other foodstuffs...
d) As far as possible the Jews are to be concentrated in cities or in sections of large cities, where the population is already predominantly Jewish. There, ghettos are to be established, and the Jews are to be prohibited from leaving these ghettos. In the ghettos the Jews are to receive only as much food as the rest of the population can spare, but not more than is required for their bare subsistence....
e) Jews fit for work will be drafted for forced labor as required....Payment for the work need not be based in performance, but should cover only the bare subsistence of the forced laborers and members of his family not capable of working, taking into account other monies at his disposal....
Distribution:
Reichskommissariat
Higher SS and Police Leader
Generalkommissar: Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Byelorussia.  

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Order by Himmler for the Liquidation of the Ghettos of Ostland (June 21, 1943)

Reichsfuehrer SS
Secret

To:
1. The Higher SS and Police Leader (Hoherer SS-und Polizeifuehrer Ostland)
2. Chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (Chef des SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamtes)

1) I order that all Jews still remaining in ghettos in Ostland area be collected in concentration camps.
2) I prohibit the withdrawal of Jews from concentration camps for [outside] work from August 1, 1943...
4) Inmates of Jewish ghettos who are not required are to be evacuated to the East.
-signed H. Himmler  

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Purges of Jewish Communal Leaders (Soviet Union 1949-1953)

Hundreds of Jewish activists, leaders and literary figures were arrested, reported missing, or killed. In the following excerpt from Khruschchev Remembers, Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged that Stalin ordered the death of the prominent Jewish actor, Mikhoels.

More typical was the cruel punishment of Mik-hoels, the greatest actor of the Yiddish theatre, a man of culture. They killed him like beasts. They killed him secretly. Then his murderers were rewarded and their victim was buried with honors. The mind reels at the thought! It was announced the Mikhoels had fallen in front of a truck. Actually, he was thrown in front of a truck....And who did it?

Stalin did it, or at least it was done on his instructions....I've tried to give Stalin his due and to acknowledge his merits, but there was no excuse for what, to my mind, was a major defect in his character–his hostile attitude toward the Jewish people. Stalin diminished the number of Jews in prominent positions in the Soviet hierarchy with a 1942 secret order. From 1937 to 1946, the number of Jews in the Supreme Soviet dropped from 47 (4.1%) to 5 (less than 1%). The number of Jews in the Soviet of Nationalities dropped during the same period from the 11th highest rank to the 26th. By 1961, the percentage of Jews in the Central Committee had dropped to .3% from almost 25 percent 40 years earlier. A quota system obtained in higher education. In 1948, Jews comprised one-third of the department of sciences at the University of Moscow; in 1964, 20 percent; in the late 1970's out of 500 admissions each year, less than five Jews were admitted. The following account of Milovan Djilas, a Yugoslav political leader familiar with Stalin, illustrates the official dimension to these quotas:

...A man of the apparatus of the CC [Central Committee] of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union boasted to me how Zhdanov had cleared all Jews out of the CC apparatus. The Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Army, Antonov, was accidentally discovered to be a Jew. Thus his illustrious career came to an end. The struggle against the ‘rootless' cosmopolitans in the USSR is in fact a concealed form of the struggle against Jewish intellectuals. During the war, antisemitism was more or less openly expressed in the army. There was a great deal of talk in 1948 in Moscow concerning the Hungarian CC (which, as is known, consisted mostly of Jews). Jews had also been allocated the main role in the Moscow trials. There are no more Jews in the public life of the USSR. They are citizens of a lower, the lowest, order. This same policy is now being applied in Eastern Europe against that handful of martyred people who survived Fascist extermination. And this was, is and will be done regardless of whether the Jews are bourgeois or socialist...

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The Doctors' Plot and the Campaign Against "Cosmopolitanism," (1952-1953)

An antisemitic propaganda campaign climaxed with the Doctors' Plot and an uprising against "Cosmopolitanism." The following reports are from the State-controlled Soviet press.

Official Announcement of the Doctor's Plot, Pravda (January 13, 1953)

Some time ago, the agencies of state security uncovered a terrorist group of doctors who had made it their aim to cut short the lives of active public figures of the Soviet Union by means of sabotaged medical treatment....

The criminals confessed that they took advantage of Comrade A.A. Zhdanov's ailment by incorrectly diagnosing the illness and concealing an infarct of his myocardium and, by prescribing a regime contra-indicated for this serious ailment, killed Comrade A.A. Zhdanov. Investigation established that the criminals likewise cut short the life of Comrade A.S. Shcherbakov by incorrectly employing strong drugs in his treatment, treatment which was fatal to him, bringing about his death.

The criminal doctors sought, above all, to undermine the health of leading Soviet military personnel, to put them out of action and to thereby weaken the defense of the country....

...It has been established that all these homicidal doctors, who had become monsters in human form, tramping the sacred banner of science and desecrating the honor of scientists, were enrolled by foreign intelligence services as hired agents.

Most of the participants in the terrorist group (M.S. Vovsi, B.B. Kogan, A.I. Feldman, A.M. Grinshtein, Ya. G. Etinger and others) were connected with the international Jewish bourgeois nationalists organization, ‘Joint', established by American intelligence for the alleged purpose of providing material aid to Jews in other countries...

Article on Cosmopolitanism and the "Doctors Plot" Trud (February 18, 1953)

Cosmopolitanism is not just a hostile ideology. Cosmopolitanism is the savage struggle of the doomed classes against new social forces, against everything progressive....

It is not pure chance that the cosmopolitans and hardened bourgeois nationalists are given the most foul and filthy tasks by the instigators of war, including murder, espionage, sabotage, wrecking, even the assassination of the best representatives of the Russian nation. New evidence of this is the unmasking, by the organs of State security of the USSR, of a terrorist group of doctor-poisoners, enemies of the people, whose aim was to shorten the lives of active figures of the USSR.

Most members of the group–Vovsi, Kogan, Feldman, Grinshtein, Etinger and others–were linked with international Jewish bourgeois nationalist ‘Joint' organization created by the American intelligence service allegedly to give practical help to the Jews in other countries.

Within a month of Stalin's death on March 5, 1953, an announcement in Pravda acknowledged that the group of doctors had been arrested falsely and had been freed.

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Measures Against Synagogues in Ukraine (1959)
The drive to destroy Jewish culture in the Soviet Union included the closure of synagogues and Hebrew schools. In 1926, there were 1,103 synagogues in the Soviet Union; by 1972, there were only 58. The following article is from the New York Times.

United Nations, NY June 18, 1959: The synagogue in a Ukrainian city was reliably reported today to have been closed by Soviet authorities last month in the Kremlin's campaign against the practice of the Jewish religion.

According to these reports all the Torahs (Books of Scripture) in the synagogue, situated in Chernigov, were confiscated. A delegation of Jews set out to seek the intervention of Dr. Yehudah Levin, rabbi of the Moscow congregation.

This followed the arrest last fall of a number of Jews in Chernovtsy, also in the Ukraine, including synagogue officials, on the charge that they had participated in ‘Zionist propaganda'. This was based on the fact that during the Passover celebration they participated in the traditional toast to ‘Next year in Jerusalem.'

So far as can be determined, the measures against the practice of the Jewish religion are inspired primarily by the Kremlin's belief that Soviet Jews are under the sway of ‘bourgeois Jewish nationalism', and thus are bound together. In other words, the campaign may be inspired by political motives rather than by the desire to crush the Jewish religion....

In Minsk, Belorussia, eight Jewish students were arrested and jailed last December for ‘having organized a Zionist cell'. A number of Jews in Kishinev, capital of the Moldavian Republic, were arrested for having violated a government decree and making mazot (unleavened bread) at a recent celebration of the Passover.  

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Denial of Teaching of Hebrew in the Soviet Union (1971-1972)
The following correspondence between members of the Jewish community and Soviet authorities, as well as and articles in Soviet press, demonstrate that Soviet authorities forbade the teaching of Hebrew.

December 14, 1971:
To your letter in the matter of engaging in private teaching practice (teaching of the Hebrew language), the Moscow Municipal Finance Department informs you that the teaching of one or another language on the territory of the USSR is provided for by the study program which is established by the Ministry of Education of the USSR.

The teaching of the Hebrew language is not provided for by this program. In connection with this, engagement in private practice for teaching of this language is inadmissible. For permission for the right to teach the above-mentioned language, you should apply to the Ministry of Education of the USSR.
Dep. Head of the MOSGORF INUPRAVLENIA
signature Soboleva
Dep. Head of State Income Section
signature Loginov

January 7, 1972:
To the Minister of Cultural Furtseva E.A.
To the Director of the Office for the Export and Import of Books, "KNIGOEKSPORT"
To the Director of the Central Agency "SOYUZPECHAT" for foreign publications
From: Roginsky Vladmir Isaakovich
Moscow, 117415, Lobachevsky St, 48/87, apt. 16

I am a Jew and I have the natural desire to read books, magazines and newspapers in my national language–Hebrew. I would like to have a home library of literature in Hebrew, just as in every Russian family there is a home library of Russian literature.

In connection with this I beg you to inform me:
Where and how can I buy books in Hebrew?
Where and how can I subscribe or regularly purchase magazines and newspapers in Hebrew?
-Signature

January 14, 1972:
USSR Ministry of Communication
Central Agency "SOYUZPECHAT" for foreign publications
Moscow 1-11-, Bezbozhny Per. 19, block 16,
To: Com. Roginsky V.I.,

Dear Com. Roginsky,

"Soyuzpechat" does not receive foreign literature in the Hebrew language.

Deputy Director of the Agency
(Mitkevich E.) Signature
Moscow Municipal Council of the Workers'
Deputies
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
MOSCOW MUNIPAL FINANCE COMMITTEE
103031 Moscow, Kuznetsky Bridge 16,
Tel. 228-45-24

June 12, 1972:
To your letter, sent by the Procurator's Office of the Cheremushkins Region concerning the Income received by you from giving private lessons to citizens in the Hebrew language and concerning registering you in connection with this as a payer of income tax, the Moscow Municipal Finance Administration informs you of the following: as it is known in our country Hebrew is not taught in government higher and intermediate institutes of learning or in general–education schools and, for this reason, has no state significance.

In addition you do not have the profession of a teacher of the abovementioned language and the legislation permits only teaching practice. Under these conditions the Cheremushkinsk Regional Finance Section cannot register you for payment of income tax.

Dep. Head of Administration, (P.P. Stefansky)
Dep. Head of State Income Section,(A.B. Loginov)

Reactions to Hebrew Teaching in the Soviet Press Izvestia December 24, 1976:

The Soviet public cannot accept that the Jewish nationalists want to use the Hebrew study groups for the propaganda of Zionist ideology, for the cultivation of the spirit of national exclusivity and of open racism.

Literaturnaya Gazeta February 8, 1978:

The [Hebrew] language, exhumed from Talmudic texts, has not yet become an effective instrument of literary and scientific creativity.  

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Blood Libel "Documentary" in Belarus (1997)
The "blood libel" accuses Jews of murdering Christians for ritual purposes. It has lasted from medieval times to the present day. State television of Belarus broadcast a "documentary" that included a 17th century "blood libel" story. The airing of the film coincided with the celebration of the saint's day of the Belarussian Orthodox Church, to which the majority of the population belongs.

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