MASSACRE OF JEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14174, 24 September 1909, Page 5

MASSACRE OF JEWS.

BOYS THROWN ON A BONFIRE.

CALLOUS RUSSIAN POLICE.

PILLAGING ■AT KIEFF.

By Telcs-raph.—Press Association.—

St. Petersburg, September 22. A band of reactionaries and hooligans have attacked and pillaged the Jews' quarter at Kiefr.

They killed 29 Jews, 'seriously wounded 150, and slightly wounded a thousand. '

The Jews,, in self-defence, killed three and wounded 18" of their attackers. . ""■.." - :

The police did not attempt to interfere in the attack, which continued for three days.

During the pillage two Jewish lads were thrown on a.bonfire" and burned to death.

The Governor only summoned the troops in response to the urgent entreaties of a Jewish deputation on the third day. When the. soldiery appeared they quickly ended the outbreak, and in a few hours all trouble was at an end.

No arrests were made either by the police or the military.

Five or six of the 11 millions of Jews reside in Russia, and it is no exaggeration to say that the condition of the majority of them presents a picture of abject misery, such as even the worst periods of the Middle Ages could hardly have exceeded. "So far from lifting," wrote the Jewish Chronicle recently, " the clouds seem to be descending over our people in an everthickening gloom, and with the whole of Eastern Europe bent upon their extermination or expukion, and the civilised countries of the West less inclined than ever to receive them, 'the outlook seems almost hopeless." Last month pogroms (organised massacres) were committed in. Bessarabia, in the extreme south-west of Russia, infuriated mobs murdering over a hundred Jews. Remarkable clemency is shown by the Tsar to those who participate in these pogroms. In March the Tsar pardoned 15 persons who had been condemned to death for the massacre of a large number of Jews at Tiraspol, in the province of Kherson. A series of trials arising out-of the massacres in 1905 in various parts of Russia was concluded last July. Sixty-one people were charged with participation in the attack during 1905 at Mariupol, on the north coast of the Sea of Azov. Sixteen were found guilty, and were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from four days to one month! The rest of the murderers were acquitted.