What is the cash value of Jewish life and limb lost through the pogroms in Russia perpetrated during the period of foreign intervention?
An attempt to do this is being made now in Moscow. Here, in the offices of the “Society for Helping the Victims of Foreign Intervention,” an account is being made up of hundreds of thousands of men and women who fell prey to the bestiality that came in the train of the foreign intervention armies and the claims of these victims are being recorded in cold figures to be presented as a counter-claim to the governments that are demanding reparations from Russia for the losses endured by their citizens in the time of the revolution.
The Society founded months ago, has proven to be a tremendous reservoir into which flow incessantly rivers of blood and tears, a recording book of the most dreadful sufferings and agonies conceivable by the human mind.
Since its inception the Society has received in all 3/4 of a million claims, representing the interests of three million individuals. Each claim is an exhibit of losses in the way of property and money which can be calculated and paid for in cash. But there are other things in the claims-recitals of agonies endured, of arrests and executions, of vindictive brutalities and raping, of shootings and hangings, of numerous forms of inquisitorial punishments and sadistic tortures committed by the soldiers of the white and black armies-can these things be appraised and paid for?
Of the 3/4 of a million claims received tens of thousands are from Jews. These are individual cases only. The 1500 programs that took place in the Ukrainia, the 125 thousand Jews killed, the 200 thousand orphans, the tens of thousands of crippled and mutilated bodies, the 30 thousand raped Jewish women, the half a million homeless men, women and children-all these are not recorded.
A Jewish woman, Krayne P. of Nikolaiev, writes: “My home is wrecked, the furniture, clothing, bedding, silverware, money, etc, have been plundered. My father and 17 year old brother were fearfully tortured by Denikin’s soldiers and later murdered. I was brutally raped, in consequence of which I am suffering from syphilis which has ruined my life.
Dr. Moses Balatner, of Kherson, writes: “Denikin’s soldiers robbed and plundered the homes of my father and brother. Everything was destroyed or taken away, jewelry, pearls, diamonds, money, silverware, precious antiques, a surgical cabinet, a costly library, mirrors, valuable rugs; in all to-talling 300 thousand rubles. My mother and father, unable to survive the beating they received, died soon after the pogrom. My brother Mendel and his wife Eta and their children, Hillel and Joseph were burned to death in the barracks, which were set on fire by Greek soldiers under the command of French and English officers.”
It appears that the foreign armies that were sent into Russia during the time of the intervention, i. e., Greeks, French, English, Czechoslovakian, etc. Kept pace with the Russian soldiers.
Joseph Koshin’s claim reads: “In the course of 1918, 1919 and 1920 I was tortured on more than one occasion by the English soldiers. With red hot spears they burned my organ; they beat my head and chest from which I have become a consumptive..”
The money debts which the governments claim from each other will possibly be paid. But these debts, the debts of blood, can never be paid. Blood cannot be paid for with money…
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
