Jews in Eastern Europe.—While the Minority Treaties were being negotiated in Paris a dangerous situation was developing in eastern and southeastern Europe. The Jews were in an unenviable position, both in the succession states, where an intolerant Nation alism was in the ascendant, and in what was left of the dismem bered empires, where scapegoats had to be found for the humilia tions of the peace settlement. They were peculiarly exposed to attack in the atmosphere created by Bolshevism in Russia and its momentary irruption into Hungary.
The Tsarist regime had subjected the Jews to a pitiless and systematic persecution. Most of them threw themselves, when the revolution came, on to the side of the Moderates, but among them were some who, goaded to desperation, developed what may be called a destructive mania. There was no Jewish blood in Lenin himself, but both in Russia and in Hungary a prominent part in the Bolshevik movement was played by men who were of Jew ish birth. In both countries the overwhelming majority of the Jews were anti-Bolshevik, not only on grounds of principle, but also because the bulk of them were traders and belonged to the very class which had most to lose from a Bolshevik victory. Nev ertheless, the enemies of the Jews branded them indiscriminately as Bolsheviks, and the alarm which the Bolshevik menace excited in Europe at the close of the War gave an impetus to reactionary forces which singled out the Jews as their targets.
In Poland the Armistice was followed by a series of anti-Jewish excesses which led the British Government to send out Sir Stuart Samuel on a mission of inquiry. The Samuel report shows that in disorders which occurred in the year after the War not less than Jews were killed and a much larger number wounded. The more serious excesses were confined to the areas of Lemberg, Pinsk and Vilna, where Poland was still at war with the Ukrainians and the Bolsheviks, but there were spasmodic outbreaks in many parts of Poland proper, and throughout the country the Jews were suffering from a sustained commercial boycott.
In Hungary, the collapse of the Bolshevik revolution under Bela Kun led to a violent reaction, which vented itself in attacks on Jewish life and property, while the sufferings of the Jewish popu lation were aggravated by acute economic distress. There were also disturbing, though less violent, outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Austria and in various parts of Germany, more especially in Bavaria. But the principal storm-centre was in southern Russia, where the Poles, the Bolsheviks and the armies of Gen. Denikin
fought over the body of the still-born Ukrainian Republic. The British Minister in Warsaw reported in June 192o that "the mas sacres of Jews by Ukrainian peasant bands can find, in their extent and thoroughness, no parallel except in the massacres of Armenians in the Turkish Empire" (Sir H. Rumbold to Lord Curzon, in Report of Sir S. Samuel on His Mission to Poland, Cmd. Paper 674, 192o). It was not until 1921 That the storm began to die down. By 1922 the Soviet Government which was now in posses sion, had restored some measure of order, but massacre was suc ceeded by famine and pestilence. Early in 1923 there were re ported to be Ioo,000 homeless Jewish orphans in the Ukraine, and in Odessa the Jewish death-rate in 1922 is said to have reached 200 per i,000. In Soviet Russia there were no massacres, but though order was fairly well maintained, the Jews suffered from the Communist regime, which deprived them of their livelihood as traders, waged war on Judaism in common with other religions, and was ruthless in its measures against "counter-revolutionaries," with whom it was disposed to class the Zionists and, indeed, all Jews who clung to their religious or national traditions.
As a result of the conditions thus created in eastern Europe, 200,000 destitute Jewish refugees were set adrift in the border land between Russia, Poland and Rumania. Responsibility for their maintenance and eventual evacuation was assumed by the Jewish Colonisation Association and other Jewish bodies. As late as the end of 1925 there was still a residue to be provided for, but the bulk of the refugees had by that time either been repa triated to Russia or been enabled to find new homes in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Argentina, Mexico or Palestine. This was only one, though it was the most poignant, aspect of the problem of the Jewish emigration. Throughout the crowded Jewries of eastern Europe there was a growing desire to escape from condi tions which seemed to hold out little prospect of a tolerable future. Between 1919-23, 238,000 Jews emigrated to the United States, while between 1919-25, 67,00o Jews emigrated to Palestine. In 1924 the Johnson law virtually closed the United States to emi grants from eastern Europe. There was no longer room for immi grants in Great Britain, and Palestine stood by itself as the one country in which the Jews had in principle an assured right of entry under an international guarantee.