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)
