When 600,000 Jews Were Exiled By Russia: A People Without Rights

Nadene Goldfoot                                       

Russian Armed Forces

WWI began July 28, 1914 and ended November 11, 1917.  At the start, 600,000 Jews were exiled from their homes and couldn't return.  
                                                                         

1900 Lithuanian Shtetl , by 1914
Jews were dispossessed and forced to
wander and suffered from starvation

From 1914 to 1915, Jews lived along the front lines of these territories.  600,000 Jews were then banished from their homes by the Russian Czarist army and not allowed to return.  They were charged with collaboration with the enemy which was false.   It just happens that 600,000 is the number that followed Moses from Egypt in the Exodus.  
                

Jewish teacher, more of a tutor in 19th Century Podalia
Podalia was a province of Ukraine, USSR.  Jews here suffered severely during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1920, a war after WWI.  By WWII, ts Jewish population was annihilated.
From 1941, Romanian Jews were also herded here and some 60,000 died.  The Russian army liberated them, helped 55,000 to survive.  

Modern Town & Country	Other Names	c. 1950 After WWII Town / Country	c. 1930 Between Wars Town / District / Province / Country	c. 1900 Before WWI Town / District / Province / Country	# of JGFF Entries
Podolia, Ukraine	Podolia [Eng], Podoliye [Rus], Podillia [Ukr], Podolye [Yid], Podole [Pol], Podolien [Ger], Podolya, Podilia, Podillya, Podolskaya Guberniya [Rus], Podolia Gubernia	Soviet Union	Soviet Union	Podolia Russian Empire

Podolia, Ukraine

Podolia [Eng], Podoliye [Rus], Podillia [Ukr], Podolye [Yid], Podole [Pol], Podolien [Ger], Podolya, Podilia, Podillya, Podolskaya Guberniya [Rus], Podolia Gubernia

Soviet Union

Soviet Union

Podolia
Russian Empire

                                                                               

Napoleon emancipated the Jews in 1791

Jews were not citizens of any country for a terribly long time.  Slowly, countries started to allow emancipation, but kept up the anti-Semitism and class distinction  in all areas.  
                                                                                     

USA:       1776: "The first country to emancipate the Jews was the United States. Jewish political inferiority during the colonial period before 1776, however, was not the result of a peculiar legal status. It derived rather from the Jews' belonging to the non-Protestant portion of the population, or in some colonies their nonmembership in one privileged Protestant denomination. Before the period of the American Revolution, Jews living in the colonies were generally ineligible for public office, owing to a Protestant form of oath which operated to exclude Catholics as well. There are instances where Jews entered public life nevertheless, perhaps by disregarding such forms. Jews were not limited in the rights of domicile, economic activity, or the practice of Judaism. Their full enjoyment of civil rights, together with the newness, foreignness, and minuscule numbers of colonial Jews, probably did not encourage them to seek the full political rights which they lacked."

France:  1791-first to give Jews emancipation in Europe.
Greece:  1830
Great Britain 1858-1890
Italy:  1870
Germany  1871
Norway  1891

Russia: 1921 "Before 1905, Russia was a feudal society wherein subjects contracted privileges from a sovereign.Pogroms continued to erupt as civil war engulfed Russia from 1918-1921. When the Bolsheviks emerged from civil war victorious, a new chapter in Russian Jewish history commenced–the subject of which was maintaining Judaism under communism.
                                                                     
There was the Jewish quota.  "After 1886, the Jewish quota was applied to education, with the percentage of Jewish students limited to no more than 10% within the Pale, 5% outside the Pale and 3% in the capitals of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev. The quotas in the capitals, however, were increased slightly in 1908 and 1915."

I note that through Lincoln, the USA emancipated Blacks in 1863.  They were freed of slavery.  Jews were not enslaved, but were not full citizens, either.
                                                         

Russians fighting Germans WWI

Eastern Europe has seen much fighting between countries vying for land by 1914.  Russia annexed land called the Duchy of Warsaw, making the Tsar of Russia also the King of Poland.  He had created Congress Poland through a treaty of 1815. This took in Volhynia, Lithuania and western Belorussia.  In reality, it was a puppet state of Russia.

Volhynia was "  a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe straddling Poland, Ukraine and Belarus."  Belorussia was "formerly known by its Russian name Byelorussia or Belorussia (Russian: Белоруссия), and is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe  bordered by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest."

"The concentration of Jews in the Pale, coupled with Tzar Alexander III's "fierce hatred of the Jews", and the rumors that Jews had been involved in the assassination of his father Tzar Alexander II made them easy targets for pogroms and anti-Jewish riots by the majority population."  It was a Catholic country, and not friendly as it was to Jews.  
                                                                       

Jewish  Lithuanian soldiers celebrating Passover WWI 

By Autumn of 1914 to the winter of 1915, the Russians took German-Austrian held Galicia.
Then Austria-Germany took over Congress Poland.
                                                                         

White Russian fighting Bolsheviks

Grant Arthur Gochin tells about his grandfather, Samuel, who was deported from his home at age 13.  He was forced by the Russians into the army at age 15.  Sam was taken to Byelorussia  (Belarus) to fight.  First, the White Russians took him, then the Red Russians had him, and then he fell back into the White Russian hands.  By 1918, Belarus was occupied by Germans, then the Poles took it over.  WWI ended in  1919 there.  He wasn't able to get back to his home in Lithuania until 1923.

Lithuanian Jews were exiled during WWI from 1914 to 1918.  Usually, they couldn't return due to the red tape presented to them just to keep them out.

October 1917 "100,000 Jews were killed in the anti‑Bolshevik campaigns conducted by Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians."

First came the Russian Revolution of February or March 1917, depending on the calendar used. Nicholas had to abdicate.  
                                                                   

Deported Jews

 The Russian Civil War lasted from  October 1917 – October 1922. " civil war erupted among the "Reds" (Bolsheviks), the "Whites" (counter-revolutionaries), the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for several years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists and thereafter reconstituted themselves as the Communist Party. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922.   Through all this, Jews had to fight, even young boys were forced to be on the front lines.
                                                           

         
The Pale of Settlement created by Catherine II of Russia existed from 1791 to 1917, the end of WWI.  "1791 to 1917,"The Pale of Settlement included all of Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova and much of present-day Ukraine, a part of eastern Latvia and some parts of western Russia, roughly corresponding to the modern western border of Russia. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and with Austria-Hungary. Furthermore, it comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia and largely corresponded to historical lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Cossack Hetmanate, and the Ottoman Empire (with Crimean Khanate).
                                                                  

In other words, it was made up of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia 's hold on Poland, Lithuania, White Russia (Belorussia or Belarus) , Ukraine, Bessarabia (Romanian-Moldavian-Ukrainian Republics.) and Crimea.  This is where Jews were allowed to live.  Jews could not live outside this border unless they were special subjects given permission such as people who graduated from a high school, an important businessman, or a skilled well-known artist.  Since only 10% were allowed to become educated, this eliminated most Jews.  No wonder my Bubba was illiterate!  
                                                                     

Map of Poland

Permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish permanent residency and in a certain period even temporary stay was mostly forbidden. However, Jews were excluded from residency in a number of cities within the Pale, and a limited number of categories of Jews—those ennobled, with university educations or at university, members of the most affluent of the merchant guilds and particular artisans, some military personnel and some services associated with them, as well as the families, and sometimes the servants of these—were allowed to live outside it."  The rumor I heard in our family was that a Goldfoot dealt in wheat and was allowed outside the Pale.  
                                                                       

The Pale of Settlement was abolished after the February Revolution in 1917, but like all other nationalities, the Jews suffered horrendously during the Civil War (1918 – 1921) when military factions from all sides robbed, harassed and murdered Jews with impunity.

Resource: Resource: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/russia.html
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/wwi-and-the-jews/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Poland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota

Malice, Murder, and Manipulation by Grant Arthur Gochin

jewishgen.org 
http://www.jewishhistory.org.il/history.php?startyear=1910&endyear=1919
https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/shaki/shaki1.html
Malice, Murder, and Manipulation-by Grant Arthur Gochin, dealing with Lithuanian government about Jewish citizenship and legal status that affected every aspect of Jewish life  in Lithuania "Old Country."  How the government abused national laws, causing many Jewish deaths in 1922 and still continues that behavior 4 generations later.