Partic ilarly revolting scenes took place in the court of the Synagogue where the Jews had sought refuge. The whole court was strewn with bodies of old men, women and children and violated girls. Many people went mad.
Many Jews sought shelter in the Church, but the soldiers surrounded it and killed the sixty Jews in it, and then burned all the Jewish houses in the town. More than two hundred houses were thus given up to the flames.
VI.
FRENCH APPEAL TO HUMANITY
In the name of human conscience, in the name of the moral responsibility, which every man bears towards his fellow men: the undersigned appeal to all people of the world and more especially to the French people.
A cry of terror and of poignant grief reaches us from Eastern Europe, from the Ukraine, from Poland, from Lithuania, and from Galicia: a whole people cries out despairingly for help.
The Jews who, for centuries, have been settled in Eastern Europe, have become the innocent and pitiful victims of struggles, national, political and
The rival ambitions of peoples, governments and parties, and all the folly of civil war satiate themselves to-day upon the unhappy Jewish minority with criminal cruelty.
THE ■ UKRAINE TERROR.
The pogroms of Tsarism, even the massacres of Kishineffl have been surpassed by these recent atrocities.
In Bessarabia, occupied by the Rumanian troops, the military authorities tolerated wicked outrages against the Jews. In Eastern Galicia a wave of pogroms followed the PoUsh invasion, and at Lemberg the terror was at its height. The horrors of Pinsk, Lida and Vilna, added a page of tears and blood to the tragic annals of.lewish history.
In more than a hundred towns of the Ukraine, frightful pogroms have taken place and tens of thousands of victims have perished. The most terrible days of the Inquisition have returned, for the niassacres have been accompanied by the most cruel tortures and the most terrible moral and jjhysical torments. At Proskenow, thousands of.Te«s were massacred. At Filchtine,.Jitomir, Balta, Ouman, Habidievka, Bobry (a Jewish agricultural colony), Litine, Kamenenetz-Podolsk, Kitaigorod, Trostinetz, etc., the number of victims is enormous. In the Ukraine the pogroms are still being carried on and threaten the Jews with complete extinction.
Millions of men, women and children, are suffering indescribable naisery, and are handed over defenceless to death and dishonour. What the war has spared of the modest possession of the Jews is now systematically pillaged and destroyed.
In the very midst of civilized Europe, at tht- dawn of the new era for which the world awaits its charter of liberty and justice, the existence of a whole population is threatened. Such crimes dishonour not only the people that commit them, but outrage human reason and conscience.
The undersigned appeal to all peoples of the world against the unheard of crimes of which a single people is the victim.
Everywhere Committees for the defence of the Jews of Eastern Europe must be organized, and these Committees must unite for prompt and \'igorous action against the oppressors.
Public opinion must be stirred up by the protest of the masses and by the great organ of the press which is at last fully and correctly informed.
Let the voices of the peoples' representatives in all the parliaments of the world be raised against these heinous iniquities. The duty is incumbent upon free peoples and responsible governments, to put an end to this monstrous violation of the rights of man.
We ask for the speedy organization of Committees of defence against persecution. Committees invested mth every authority which belongs to their high mission. jNIillions of oppressed Jews have no other safeguard than the consciousness of the moral sohdarity of the civilized world, and they have put their supreme hope in the sacred right of all men to life and liberty.
Signed: —
Anatole FRANCE.
Paul APPELL, Membre de I'Institut.
A. AULARD, Professor a la Faculte des lettres de Paris.
Henri BARBUSSE.
Charles BERNARD, Depute.
Emile COMBES, Senateur, ancien President du Conseil.
Michel CORDAY.
L. DISPAN DE FLEURAN, Professeur agrege au Lycee Lakanal.
Georges DUHAMEL.
EUe FAURE.
Charles GIDE, Professeur a la Faculty de Droit de Paris.
Ferdinand HEROLD, Vice-President de la Ligue des Droits de I'Homme.
Gustave HERVE.
L, LAPICQUE, Professeur a la Faculte
F. LARNAUDE, Doyen de la Faculty de Droit de Paris.
Signed: — Ernest LAVISSE, de TAcademie Fran-
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