| The European Jews were not exactly welcome in those Ukraine settlements,
but they did go. Many of them practiced Judiac ritual in private (they did not
live in secreted neighborhoods) and at night. The villages were listed in public
records as being Evangelical (Lutheran) or Catholic. By day, they were the usual
farmers and other people whom it would take to keep a small village alive. When
Catherine the Great opened up the Ukraine in 1762 to German settlements, she
specifically mentioned "no Jews" in the manifesto. Several manifestos from Czars
after her were similar. The Jews came anyway because they were being persecuted
in Eastern European countries, and the Russian government was offering some very
generous terms for the Eastern Europeans so they could populate that desolate
area in Ukraine. They were all called German/Russians.
In 1871, the Czar who took power began a campaign to get rid of the Jews.
He made it very hard for them to stay. This went on for about 20 years, but the
Jews kept leaving. By the time the Bolsheviks showed up at the turn of the
century, the area was largely deserted. Part of the punishment was that if a
husband died, everything he owned was taken by the state. Part of the manifesto of this Czar was
that the Germans fleeing the area had to pay a toll to get out. So, they put who
and what they could in wagons, paid their toll, and rode all the way to the
Northern coast of Germany to come via steerage on steamers to the United States.
I am sure you've heard the expression "beyond the pale". The history of
that expression comes directly from Catherine the Great. Before she opened up
the desolate Ukraine to Germans and other Eastern Europeans, her way of dealing
with Jews was to take a strip of poor land on the Western edge of Russia and
make almost all the Jews move there. That strip was called "The Pale". If a
Jewish family was lucky enough to be given permission to live outside that area,
they were "Beyond the Pale." |
