I considered it especially impossible for me to attack the
Poles to whom I was bound by honor and toward whom I bore the warmest,
most sincere sympathy.
It is therefore with no light heart that I write these lines.
Denial of the rights of man to Jewish subjects belongs to the nature of
Russia. Now and then Europe has been startled when an uncommon massacre
of innocent Jews has taken place, as in Kishineff, but all have known
and know that Russia stows her Jewish population together in the Polish
outskirts of the realm, stows them together so tightly that they can
neither live nor die, denies them the liberty of moving, the liberty of
studying, even the right of school--and university--education beyond a
certain (too small) percentage. Only such Jews who hold a university
degree are allowed to live in the capitals of the Empire. No young
Jewish woman is allowed to take up her abode near the universities in
Petrograd or Moscow, unless she has been enrolled as a prostitute, and
it has happened that the police have made their appearance and accused
her of forgery, complaining that she did not carry on her profession,
but was reading scientific books instead. If a man is, for instance, a
doctor of medicine, he may take up his abode in Moscow; in case he is
married his wife may live there with him. But if the couple has a
two-year-old child, the mother is not allowed to take it with her into
the railway carriage and let it live with her in the capital.
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