The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  He knew that Jews were oppressed, too, but he also knew from his teachers and friends that the Jews were mostly merchants, storekeepers, brokers, and black marketeers—a class that was unproductive, that didn’t work the land and only lived off the peasants and workers it exploited.

  Nor could the Jews be counted on to make the revolution. They were a weak, inconspicuous minority. The liberation of the land would be brought about by the millions of peasants who were the heart and the soul of the land, and freedom would then come to all, Jews included. The revolution wouldn’t differentiate between peoples or nations. The revolution would free Poland as well.

  Felix Feldblum became a narodnik—a populist. As soon as the Polish students established their own radical circles in the Russian universities and formed their own party, the Proletariat, Feldblum joined them. He left the university months before earning his degree. He didn’t want to be a member of the privileged class at a time when workers were starving. He went back to Poland, and with all his innately Jewish fervor he threw himself into his messianic task.

  Following in the footsteps of the Russian narodniks, Feldblum went out among the Polish peasants to spread the word. When the party shifted its emphasis to the cities, he set up his headquarters in Lodz and launched his campaign to radicalize the Christian factory workers.

  Although Lodz was full of Jewish workers of every kind, to Felix Feldblum’s eyes the only Jews present were the shopkeepers, brokers, jobbers, and assorted tradesmen—a frenzied, oddly garbed gang of connivers, whose only interest lay in money, money, and more money. Opposed to them were the thousands of gentile factory workers, former sons of the soil whom deprivation had transported from their villages to the big city. In contrast with the haggling, wildly gesticulating Jews, they struck Feldblum as stalwart, direct, honest proletarians, and as usual, he firmly took their side against the exploitative Jewish bourgeoisie.

  Not always was this devotion reciprocated. Although he spoke Polish as well as any Christian, without the trace of an accent, his name and appearance militated against him. Even as he had harangued against his own father, the local priest had gazed at him askance. “That’s all very nice and fine of you, young man, but you should leave such matters to us. You simply don’t understand the spirit of the Christian people.…”

  Even within the party, Feldblum often heard pointed allusions to his heritage despite the fact that all comrades were considered equal. And although he yearned to address the workers, the party assigned him such internal tasks as writing articles, translating literature, and working the press.

  When he poked fun at priests, the standard party line, the others appeared uncomfortable. “These are sacred things, after all,” they mumbled

  Feldblum knew that these vestiges would be rooted out in time; still, he felt a deep sense of hurt. Nor did he concur with Marcin Kuczinski that the way to win over the people was with blood and gore. For all his non-Jewish upbringing, he strongly believed in ethics and in the historical imperative of the revolution. And since he was assigned internal tasks toward that end, he performed them with fervently inbred zeal.

  The time was particularly auspicious to foment unrest. Following the long period of unemployment, the workers were angry and embittered. There was another, most significant factor. Some years earlier the first of May had been designated a universal workers’ holiday by the Second Socialist International in Paris, a day commemorating the struggle for freedom and equality.

  For Feldblum, this was the first holiday of his life. Neither at his father’s nor at his uncle’s house was a Jewish holiday ever celebrated, and he wanted the coming festival to be particularly meaningful. All the workers in the city would stay out; all the factories would shut down. The workers would parade in closed ranks, demonstrating their power to their masters and exploiters. They would also voice Poland’s protest against the tsarist slave masters. And Feldblum set the type for the proclamation with particular fervor.

  “They will respond to our call,” he assured Kuczinski. “All Lodz will come to a halt. Mark my words.…”

  Late at night, when the streets were deserted and the March winds tore at the naked branches of the few isolated Lodz trees, Felix Feldblum went home. Ever the experienced conspirator, he first sniffed the area to see if anyone was following. Then, as an extra precaution, he and his companion, Maria Licht, each went off separately on a roundabout course to the residence that they shared.

  “You weren’t followed?” he asked the swarthy girl, who arrived after him.

  “No,” she said.

  “Neither was I,” he said, relieved.

  Although they posed as a married couple—he as a commission agent and she as his wife—they slept in separate beds and never touched each other.

  “I wish I were a few weeks older so I could see how the workers will react to our May Day call,” he said in the dark. “What do you think, Maria, will they take a stand?”

  “They’ll take a stand,” she replied with assurance.

  From outside, the first factory whistles sounded. In the poor sections, kerosene lamps illuminated the windows as men and women rose to go to work.

  Thirty-Two

  AS MAY APPROACHED, Lodz grew uneasy.

  The workers did go out, but it wasn’t on May 1, as the revolutionaries planned, or even on May 3, which was the Polish national holiday secretly observed by the patriots. They struck on May 5, which was an ordinary working day.

  After nearly a year of unemployment the factories had gone back on full schedule. But since the manufacturers wanted to make up the losses they had suffered during the crisis, they cut the workers’ salaries by 10 percent. The workers, already in debt up to their ears and inflamed by the agitations of the revolutionaries and the patriotic societies, both of which, for their own reasons, called for an uprising and an insurrection, wouldn’t accept the pay cut and struck.

  As usual, there were scabs. When the striking workers couldn’t verbally persuade those still working to walk off the job, they resorted to violence. Armed with sticks and poles, they stormed the factories. The stokers barely managed to restrain them from smashing the boilers, which would have caused the factories to blow up with everyone in them.

  Weavers, spinners, stokers, and teamsters marched, accompanied by the usual street loafers and riffraff. Singing revolutionary and patriotic songs, they went from factory to factory, forcing workers away from their machines. The factory managers ordered their watchmen to bolt the gates, but the mobs smashed down all barriers.

  “Death to the bloodsuckers and leeches!” voices cried.

  The smaller manufacturers became intimidated and promptly capitulated, but the bigger ones wouldn’t yield.

  In the Huntze mill the workers sent a delegation, but the barons refused to meet with it.

  Caps in hand, bowing and scraping their muddied feet on the threshold, the members of the delegation timidly approached Director Albrecht. “What do you want?” he asked them curtly.

  “We humbly petition the illustrious director not to cut our pay,” their spokesman said.

  “I’ll take it up with Their Excellencies the barons,” the illustrious director said. “In the meantime, get back to work!”

  “First, we would like some assurance of your intentions, Illustrious Sir.”

  “We give no assurances,” the director muttered angrily. “That’s a favor only Their Excellencies the barons can bestow, should they so desire. But first you must go back to work. Later we’ll see further.”

  “Begging the Illustrious Sir’s pardon,” one of the older workers said, “can at least those with wives and children be spared the pay cut? We can’t feed our families on the lowered wages.…”

  “Who in blue blazes told you to marry and father brats if you can’t feed them?” Director Albrecht blurted. “The factory isn’t obliged to pay for your—”

  The blood rushed to the workers’ heads.

  “Damn swine!” one of the delegation mut
tered.

  “Swabian pig!”

  “Trample the fat slob for our daughters he corrupted!”

  “Kick in his beer belly for insulting decent women and children!”

  Albrecht perceived that his situation had grown precarious, and he started to rise from his chair, but before he could move his ponderous legs, the workers were upon him. Melchior tried to intercede, but he caught a fist in the face for his troubles.

  The workers dragged the terrified director out by his arms and legs like a steer to slaughter. The crowd in the courtyard sent up a chorus of jeers that sent a chill through Albrecht’s heart.

  “Hang him!” men cried. “Skin him alive!”

  “Drop his pants, and flog him!” women urged.

  The workers draped a sack over the director’s head, thrust a broom into his hand, and after sitting him in a wheelbarrow used to cart bricks and dung, they wheeled him through the factory courtyard.

  “Your mother!” the men jeered.

  “For you!” the women shrieked, showing him their behinds.

  Next, the mob headed for Flederbaum’s mill. Their lust was aroused—they wanted blood.

  “String up the damn Jew!” voices cried. “Smash his palace!”

  They rushed the gate, but it was already guarded by a row of armed soldiers under the command of an officer and by a dozen policemen headed by a huge, bearded Russian commissary, whom Flederbaum had alerted well in advance. Flederbaum himself sat inside his luxurious office with a loaded revolver by his side. Next to him sat the police chief himself with several of his aides. As the policemen led the workers in one by one from the factory yard, the chief interrogated them on the spot. He only posed the questions; he didn’t wait to hear the answers.

  “Why aren’t you at work?”

  When the worker would try to justify himself, the chief cried, “Silence!” And he slammed the table.

  If the worker still tried to speak, the policemen silenced him with their fists. The chief didn’t even bother to question some of the workers. “I don’t like the looks of that one,” he would say. “Hold him on suspicion.…”

  When the mob of detained workers filled the corridor, they were surrounded by policemen and marched off to the station. But the crowd gathered outside the factory closed ranks and wouldn’t let the arrested workers be taken away. The officer guarding the gate drew his sword and ordered the mob to disperse. “Break it up, sons of bitches, or I’ll give the order to fire!” he threatened.

  The crowd didn’t budge. The men pushed even closer toward the gates, and the women waved kerchiefs and cooed at the soldiers, “Lads, you wouldn’t shoot down a fellow Christian.…”

  The officer knew that soldiers were susceptible to female entreaties, and he was afraid to delay any longer. “Take aim!” he cried in a resounding voice.

  Rifles were raised to shoulders.

  The officer hesitated another moment to give the mob a chance to back up. When no one stirred, he barked curtly, “Fire!”

  Several dozen shots shattered the strained silence. Smoke, shouts, cries, and the sound of running feet filled the air. With bayonets fixed, the soldiers prodded the human mass, clearing the square. Policemen seized people at random and put them under arrest.

  When order had been restored, the police chief treated the officer to a real Havana cigar, which he had obtained from Flederbaum, and pressed his hand in congratulations.

  “Tomorrow the factories will be back to normal,” he said with a wink.

  Despite his prediction, the factories weren’t back to normal the next day. By the tens of thousands, the workers turned out into the streets in their Sunday best and began attacking policemen, gathering outside the jails and demanding the release of their comrades. Others demanded to see the police chief himself.

  The night before, a worker had seized the chief’s dog, a wolfhound of the purest breed, and had stabbed it in revenge for the beating his father had gotten at the station. The police seized the perpetrator and brought him before the chief. “A hundred lashes!” the chief ordered. “And don’t spare the whip!”

  By the seventieth stroke the victim no longer cried or kicked his legs, but the whipper didn’t stop until he had recorded a full 100 strokes. When he ordered the worker to rise, the man was already dead. The chief berated the whipper. “Idiot, you should have given him a breather every twenty-five strokes or so!”

  He had the dead man hustled out of town and buried in some deserted spot, but somehow, the news leaked out, and the strikers demanded their fellow worker’s body. “He’s got to be given a decent Christian funeral, not be tossed on some heap like a dog!” they growled.

  The police chief called out the firemen to hose down the inflamed mob with cold water, but this served only to ignite the workers’ ire. They grabbed cobblestones and began to smash the panes of the headquarters building.

  In other streets, mobs attacked police stations and government liquor stores. The chief panicked and wired the governor in Piotrkow. “What orders?”

  The governor wired the governor-general in Warsaw. “What orders?”

  The governor-general wired Petersburg. “What orders?”

  Petersburg wired Warsaw. “Crush without mercy.”

  Warsaw wired Piotrkow. “Crush without mercy.”

  Piotrkow wired Lodz. “Crush without mercy.”

  The police chief wired the governor. “Short of troops. Send Cossacks.”

  The governor wired Warsaw. “Short of troops. Send Cossacks.”

  Warsaw promptly dispatched a regiment of Cossacks, but in the interim, the rioters ruled Lodz.

  First, they smashed open the liquor stores and drank up the wares. The party leaders pleaded with them in vain to conduct themselves with dignity. People stretched out in the gutters, lapping up spilled whiskey. When they were decently sodden, they lit torches and raced through the streets, looking for new sources of amusement.

  They seized a Polish tailor, a hunchback with a great drooping mustache, and proclaimed him King of Poland.

  “Long live the Polish king!” the mob cried, carrying the terrified wretch on their shoulders. “Hurrah!”

  The women ran up to kiss the king’s twisted feet.

  The mood of the mob suddenly shifted.

  “Let’s get the Jews!”

  “On to Balut—to Balut!”

  The rioters poured into Jewish stores, dragged Jewish merchants out of droshkies, and beat them severely. The storekeepers fled their shops, leaving their goods to the mob’s mercy. Jewish women swooned. The doors and gates of Jewish houses were nailed shut.

  A number of Jews made a stand. Butchers, teamsters, blacksmiths, and porters used axes, clubs, and crowbars to fend off the attackers. On Feiffer Lane, which was inhabited by magicians, organ grinders, and assorted criminals, the residents poured boiling water down on the intruders. One young butcher swung his ax so zestfully that he clove a gentile’s skull in two.

  The gentiles drew back, but they took along their mutilated comrade and displayed his corpse in the streets. “See what the Christ killers have done to a good Christian!” they cried.

  At dawn the Cossacks reached Lodz, accompanied by Governor von Müller. The police chief rode out to meet him.

  “What’s the situation in the city?” the governor asked.

  “A pogrom against the Jews, Excellency,” the chief reported, saluting.

  “Excellent!” the governor said with a smile. “That should keep them busy for a while.…”

  He leaned toward the colonel of the regiment who was sharing his carriage. “We’ll camp here a day or two until the Polish dogs have had their fill; then we’ll give them a taste of powder.”

  After three days of riot and carnage the Cossacks slowly rode into town. Sated with blood, besotted with drink, the rioters offered no resistance.

  The Cossacks rounded up hundreds of men and women and packed them off to jails. The “Polish King” was brought before the governor. Trembling, hi
s hair and mustache awry, he cowered before the magnificently uniformed governor.

  “So you’re the King of Poland?” the governor asked with a smile.

  “I’m innocent, Your Worship,” the terrified hunchback whined. “I’m a tailor by trade, a patcher. I was walking in the street when some people grabbed me and said I was the King of Poland. I swear before Jesus and His sacred wounds—”

  “What’s to be done with him, Excellency?” the police chief asked.

  “Whip his Royal Majesty’s ass; then send him home to his wife, the Queen.”

  Afterward the governor called on the Barons Huntze and Meritorious Citizen Maximilian Flederbaum. The latter came out to meet the governor with a bandaged head. For all his Christian attire and upturned mustaches, he had been beaten by the gentiles as if he were some common Jew.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry,” the governor exclaimed. “If you would point out the hooligans who did this to you, I’ll see to it they’re punished at once!”

  Flederbaum knew that the governor knew that he, Flederbaum, knew what the story was, but he merely bowed his bloodied head and thanked the governor for his sympathy.

  The Jewish stores slowly reopened. Glaziers replaced panes. Burial Society members rode about in their hearses, picking up corpses. Doctors bandaged the wounded. Rabbis fasted, and in the houses of worship, trembling Jews recited fast day prayers during the afternoon services.

  The gentile workers, subdued and apathetic, stood with heads deeply bowed and pleaded with the factory directors to take them back. The directors took them back, but they cut salaries at their own discretion. Black smoke again belched in twisted whirls from factory chimneys, polluting the Lodz air as before.

  In Jewish courtyards, blind beggars from Feiffer Lane sang “Pillage,” the song that an enterprising street musician had composed to commemorate the orgy:

  Hear, oh, good people, of the fear,