Prosecution of
the Jews:
Cantonist children for the Russian army
(17th century until 1856)
How the criminal "Christian" church and the czars took Jewish
children for military drill to make "Christians" of them
from:
Cantonists; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, vol. 5
presentation by Michael Palomino (2007)
<CANTONISTS,
[Child soldiers in the barracks -
25 years service in the Czarist Army, compulsory since 1827]
Jewish children who were conscripted to military institutions in
czarist Russia with the intention that the conditions in which they
were placed would force them to adopt Christianity. The "cantonist
units" were properly barracks (cantonments) established for children of
Russian soldiers. They provided instruction in drill and military
training, as well as a rudimentary education. Discipline was maintained
by threat of starvation and corporal punishment.
At the age of 18 the pupils were drafted to regular army units where
they served for 25 years. Enlistment for the cantonist institutions,
which originated in the 17th century,
was most rigorously enforced
during the reigns of (col. 130)
*Alexander I (1801-25) and *Nicholas I (1825-55). It was abolished in
1856 under "Alexander II.
Military service was made compulsory for Jews in Russia in 1827, the
age for the draft being established as between 12 and 25 years. The
1827 statute also provided that "Jewish minors under 18 years of age
shall be placed in preparatory training establishments for military
training", i.e., the cantonist units.
[Jewish quota system - communal
Jewish leaders are made responsible - children from poor families - the
khapers]
The Jewish communal authorities who were required to furnish a certain quota of army
recruits, were authorized to make up the number of adults with
adolescents. The high quota that was demanded, the brutally severe
service conditions, as well as the knowledge that the conscript would
be forced to contravene Jewish religious precepts and cut himself off
from his home and family, made those liable for conscription try every
means of evading it. The communal leaders who were made personally
responsible for implementing the law took the easiest way out and
filled the quota from children of the poorest homes, who made up over
half the total of those conscripted.
Every community had special officers, known in Yiddish as khapers ("kidnappers") for seizing
the children, who were incarcerated in the communal building and handed
over to the military authorities. The khapers, who were not scrupulous
about adhering to the minimum age of 12, also impressed children of
eight or nine. These were alleged by witnesses on oath to have reached
the statutory age. An additional consideration in sending minors was
reluctance to cause
hardship to adults who were generally married and had to support their
families.
[The aim of alienation of the
children from their families - report by A. Herzen about deported
children]
The objective of the Russian authorities was to alienate the cantonist
children-recruits from their own people and religion. The children were
therefore transferred from their homes within the *Pale of Settlement
and sent to cantonist institutions in Kazan, Orenburg (now Chkalov),
Perm, and in Siberia. The journey took several weeks.
The Russian radical author A. Herzen described his meeting in 1935 with
a convoy of Jewish cantonists:
"The officer who escorted them aside, 'They have collected a crowd of
cursed little Jew boys of eight or nine years old. Whether they are
taking them for the navy or what, I can't say. At first the orders were
to drive them to Perm; then there was a change and we are driving them
to Kazan. I took them over a hundred versts farther back. The officer
who handed them over said, 'It's dreadful, and that's all about it; a
third were left on the way' (and the officer pointed to the earth). Not
half will reach their destination', he said.
'Have there been epidemics, or what?' I asked, deeply moved.
'No, not epidemics, but they just die off like flies. A Jew boy, you
know, is such a frail, weakly creature, like a skinned cat; he is not
used to tramping in the mud for ten hours a day and eating biscuit -
then again, being among strangers, no father nor mother nor petting;
well, they cough and cough until they cough themselves into their
graves. And I ask you, what use is it to them? What can they do with
little boys? ...'
"They brought the children and formed them into regular ranks: it was
one of the most awful sights I have ever seen, those poor, poor
children! Boys of twelve or thirteen might somehow have survived it,
but little fellows of eight and ten ... Not even a brush full of black
paint could put such horror on canvas.
Pale, exhausted, with frightened faces, they stood in thick, clumsy,
soldiers' overcoats, with stand-up collars, fixing helpless, pitiful
eyes on the garrison soldiers who were roughly getting them into ranks.
The white lips, the blue rings under their eyes, bore witness to fever
or chill. And these sick children, without care or kindness, exposed to
the icy wind that blows unobstructed from the Arctic Ocean were going
to their graves" (A. Herzen: My Past and Thoughts, 1 (1968), 219-20).
[The "Christian" terror of the
cantonment barracks - and on farms]
Once in the cantonments they were handed over to the supervision of
Russian sergeants and soldiers who had been (col. 131)
directed to "influence" the children to become baptized. Their zizit and tefillin were removed forcibly.
They were forbidden to pray or even to talk in their own language, and
forced to attend Christian religious instruction and learn the ritual.
If routine measures, such as threats of starvation, of deprivation of
sleep, or of lashing, proved unavailing, the "educators" would resort
to all kinds of physical torture until their more stubborn victims
either died or became converted. Only a few, mainly the older ones,
held out.
The cantonists were sometimes sent to Russian farmsteads in remote
villages where they performed exhausting labour and were forced to
change their faith.
After the baptismal ceremony, when the youngsters changed their names
and were registered as children of their sponsors, there commenced a
period of training in the company of the non-Jewish cantonists who did
not forget the Jewish origin of the converts and continued to maltreat
them. Sometimes a youth who reached the age of 18, when about to be
drafted to the regular army unit, would state that he wished to revert
to Judaism. For this he would be sent to a detention center and
punished until he signed a retraction. Some converts returned to the
faith on their release from the army, but discovery meant prosecution.
A number of cases brought to court during the reign of Alexander II
revealed the full horrors of the regime in the cantonist institutions
to the Russian public.
[1854-55: Cantonists during
Crimean War]
The conscription laws were imposed with particular rigor during the
Crimean War (1854-55), when a Jewish quota of 30 conscripts per
thousand males was required, and gangs of khapers went to hunt down their
victims.
[Figures about Jewish Cantonist
children]
It is difficult to estimate the number of Jewish minors recruited under
the cantonist legislation in the 29 years of its operations. The
incomplete data available indicate that they numbered 30,000 to 40,000.
In 1843, 6,753 children of Jewish origin were reported in 22 cantonist
institutions, and in 1854, at the height of the enforcement of the
laws, 7,515 Jewish minors were conscripted into the Russian army.
The government of Nicholas I regarded the cantonist laws as part of the
system of legislation for "correcting" the Jews in the realm, their
principal object being to convert large numbers of Jewish children to
Christianity and make them conform to the Russian environment. The
cantonist laws were therefore used as a means of exerting pressure on
Jews in other spheres.
[Exemptions of Cantonist law -
Jewish migration to territories without Cantonist law and abroad]
Jewish youths who attended the state schools, for instance, were
exempted from their military obligations, as were children of Jewish
agricultural colonists. These concessions, therefore, to some extent
promoted an increase in the proportion of Jewish children at state
schools and of Jewish agricultural settlers. The cantonist legislation
also did not apply to districts of the Kingdom of Poland and of
Bessarabia - the latter until 1852 - so that a number of Jews moved
from the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania to these areas. The law
thus also stimulated Jewish emigration from Russia.
[The bitter traces of Cantonist
law in the Russian Jewish consciousness]
The "kidnapping rules" left a bitter residue in the minds of the Jewish
masses in Russia. The opposition which sometimes flared up was
generally directed against the Jewish communal leaders. Tales
circulated of tragic cases of death and martyrdom among the cantonists.
It is no accident that in those districts where the cantonist problem
was acute social tension within Jewish society was more intense. The
horror that descended upon the Jewish communities is reflected in the
folk poems of the period:
"Tears flood the streets
Bathed in the blood of children -
The fledglings are torn from heder
And thrust into uniform -
Alas! What bitterness
Will day never dawn?"> (col. 132)
