Note (return) — Chapter VI

This was the worst punishment of all, the most relentless vengeance wreaked on a helpless victim. "Of all the laws which swept down upon them from St. Petersburg and Moscow," says Leroy-Beaulieu with characteristic insight into the soul of Israel, "those which they [the Jews] find hardest to bear are the regulations that block their entrance to the Russian universities." The bloodless weighed heavier than the bloody pogroms. Consumed with a desire for education, wealthy Russian Jews made an attempt to establish higher schools of their own, without even drawing upon the surplus money of the kosher-meat fund, which had originally been created for such purposes. Baron de Hirsch, too, offered two million dollars for the higher and technical education of the Jews. But every attempt proved fruitless. Baron de Hirsch's munificence was flatly refused. In the school which Mr. Weinstein opened at Vinitza, Podolia, no more than eight Jews were allowed to attend among eighty Christians, and in the one at Gorlovka, founded by another Jew (Polyakov), only five per cent were admitted.3