THE OUTRAGES ON THE JEWS IN RUSSIA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 235, 3 October 1881, Page 4

THE OUTRAGES ON THE JEWS IN RUSSIA.

At the meeting in Sydney to devise means for alleviating the distress of the Jews in South Rossis, the Rev. A. B. Davis made a speech in which he made some quotations showing the treatment to the Jews had been subjected. He esirJ tbs Paris eorreepondent of the London Times, under date May D, writes as follows :—" The newspapers say little of Elisabetbgrad (that is where the ill-feeling first broke oat), and the pen vainly endeavours to depict thfl situation. A cry of rage and grief ib raised from the unhappy district. The town looks as if it had been devastated by the elements. Whole itieets have been literally rszed. Almoat all the Jews' houses ere Backed, and all shops plundered ; bonds have been stolen, and even destroyed. People but yesterday rich, or at lesßt comfortably off, are now beggars. Thousands of Jdws are homeless, and living on public charity. Many are seriously, acd others slightly, wounded ; several were killed. Do net imagine I am exaggerating ; the pictare is, ales ! far below the reality." After the outbreak of Kief, a spectator describes in a Buisisn periodical the scene he witnessed ; — " I went to visit Petehersk, where I wes told that the Jews who hod been plundered had found a refuge. Behind the Lavra gate, in be enclosure ttat serves es ac ammuniiion store for the arsenal, I beheld a truly he^rt-rending sight. Packed together like anfs on an anthill were more than 1800 Jews, with their wives and children — many ol them were infante. They were clad in rags and barefooted. Many of them bore traces of iH-treatment, and a number of them had bendaged heeds. All were ghastly pala and (error-stricken. Ac I approached them I saw a boy of 10 dyicg in terrible agony. His another eat by him, tearless, as if too deeply afflicted to weep. A little further on I came across another mourning group. Then I penetrated into their midst. What I flaw there was like c kind of hell ful! of troubled eouls. It was a eight to unnerve the strongest man. Ihere was hanger and cold, weeping ani gnashing of teeth. A heart of stona would have melted, and I coulJ not withhold my tears. I was told that among these wretched beings awful ecenes had been witnessed. Mothers hud lost their children, and there hsd been fights and struggles for the limited epace allotted to them. Many of them told me their tale of woe. One of them said, 'I had 20,000 roubles and a small farm ; now I have nothing but she ra&s on my back. Another addressed me thus : • My two brothers were killed in the wood last night, and I do oot know what fate has befallen my eon.' A third stid, ' They •wanted to hang ray mother, but she escßped with the rope around her neck.' A fourth stated his case thus : 'They have robbed us of everything, even our clothes, leaving ua ntked as you see.'" Can we credit it, that ia tbie year of grace, 1881, such scenes Bhoold be enacted ? And what has given rise to tbie malignant feeling ? Some set it down as an offeboot of the incomprehensible Yeuden-hetze in Berlin. Others attribute it to two or three Jews and a Jewesß, Jesaie Helfmana, who were found among tbeNihiliets. Others say it is the fell work of the Nihilists tbemsßlveSi and which appears to be the true solution. Further it was said by their enemies that the Jews kept high holiday on the day that the late Czar was cruelly assassinated, and so they did in their incocence of the tragedy then occurring for i t happened to be their Paseovc-r Festivel day. But whatever may be the moving cause, it cannot mitigate their (earful sufferings, cor serve as a plea for wholesale robberies, murders, and violence.