Reality and Myth: Jewish Self-Mutilation
to Avoid Military Conscription

Introduction

This article examines stories of Jewish self-mutilation that took place in the Russian Empire and Austrian Empire/Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in order to avoid military conscription during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It seeks to do so in a way that, in the words of Jewish historian Derek Penslar, “neither denies the gravity of the crisis that conscription posed…nor indulges in lachrymose presentations.”[1] This goal is made difficult, since the line between myth and historical reality is, here, often blurred.[2] First, documented evidence of self-mutilation to avoid conscription is scant, while second-hand stories, as well as fictional depictions in novels, plays, and songs are more plentiful.[3] The historian of Jews and the Russian military, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, has noted in this regard: “Narratives of Russian Jewish conscription were not appreciably different from medieval and early modern chronicles of Jewish martyrdom.”[4]

Second has been the power of Zionist ideology, beginning with Max Nordau’s writing in 1903 on “muscle Jews,” that has, over the decades, celebrated the physically strong new type of Jew (and Jewish nation), while  denigrating the weak, passive Jew (and Jewish communities) of Eastern and Western Europe, from the massacres of the Medieval Ages, through the pogroms of Russia, to the horrors of the Holocaust.[5] In this ideology, the story of Jewish powerlessness, especially under the Russian Czars, resonates powerfully. Here, as if some sort of masochistic punishment, the weak Jew wounds himself in his attempt to escape harm at the hands of the enemy. Moreover, using a psychoanalytic lens, the Eastern European Jew in his self-mutilation, also underscored the problematic aspects (from the Zionist perspective) of Orthodox religious practice since this appears to be an unconscious re-enactment of a key Jewish ritual: the wound received by the removal of the tip of a finger is reminiscent of circumcision.

Third, if, in Zionist ideology, self-mutilation has been a key story in the weak-strong binary identity of the State of Israel, it also played has played an important role in the acculturate-assimilate binary identity of Jews in the Diaspora. For these Jews, what was emphasized was the story of young children placed in Russian cantonist schools where they were pressured to convert, and of adult soldiers removed from the Jewish community for twenty-five years, resulting in the loss of their Jewish identity. For Diaspora Jewry, self-mutilation becomes a heroic refusal to have one’s Jewish identity eradicated.[6]

All of these factors, then, in Penslar’s words, have resulted in Jewish conscripts in Eastern Europe becoming “a metonym for the collective suffering of the Jewish people and its ongoing struggle against assimilation.”[7] No wonder then, that when it comes to stories of Jewish conscripts’ self-mutilation, separating historical reality from myth is difficult.[8] Nevertheless, due to a number of recent studies by scholars, it is possible to arrive at a less mythological and more historically sound story concerning Jewish self-mutilation. The key to doing so, is to distinguish between the military conscription policies of two different empires: the Austrian (later, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) and the Russian; and, within the Russian Empire, to distinguish between two distinct periods, that of Nicholas I and that of Alexander II and his successors.[9] While it is reasonably certain that Jewish self-mutilation did take place in the Russian Empire during the twenty-five-year period between 1827-1855, it was a rare occurrence there and in Austria-Hungary in the second half of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the 20^th.

Mutilation Stories

I begin with a self-mutilation story from my own family, told by my grandfather: “My uncle [Joseph Greenberg, born 1847 in Russia] avoided the draft by chopping off his right thumb. As a child, while sitting on his lap, I noticed the missing thumb. It was years later that I heard the story from him.”[10] Yet, Joseph had five children and twenty-nine grandchildren and not one of them passed on this story to their descendants. In 2020, intrigued by the mystery of Joseph’s thumb, I decided to collect stories from other Jewish families who had stories about relatives who had maimed themselves to avoid military conscription. To do so, I reached out to members of the Jewish genealogical community who were the most likely to have investigated and preserved family stories and who were also most likely to have additional, corroborating information about their family members. As I had surmised, my grandfather was not alone in relating a story about Jewish self-mutilation to avoid conscription. More than two dozen members of Jewish.Gen, wrote back to me with their stories (hereafter, referred to as “correspondents”).

For the most part, the correspondents’ relatives who were involved with mutilation were born between 1880 and 1895. Most came from Polish lands within the Russian Empire, and from Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[11] Eight stories told of family members who had their index finger cut off or who had two fingers removed. One story, that took place during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), involved a relative who was said to have shot off the top of his pinky finger so he could be sent home. Another story involving gunshot, told of a grandfather from Poland who stated he had shot off his entire middle finger with a gun to avoid conscription during WWI (1914-1918). Two told of thumbs cut off, three told of those who punctured an ear drum, and five related the stories of eyes that had been deliberately injured.[12] Then, too, there were stories of those who could be hired to do the mutilation: “My great-great uncle was a barber in Belarus. He was called ‘The Crippler.’ For a small fee he would cut off some fingers so men could avoid the Czar’s draft.”

While it is highly likely that the majority of the family members in these accounts did, indeed, have missing digits or other injured body parts, and while it is also highly likely that having these bodily injuries may well have exempted them from Russian and Austria-Hungary military service, it is uncertain whether these were deliberate acts of maiming to avoid conscription or the result of unfortunate accidents.[13] Even when several of the correspondents provided photographs that showed their relative with a missing digit, the lack of closeup shots did not make it possible to ascertain whether the severing occurred on an oblique angle (usually indicating an accident) or a straight line (deliberate maiming). This uncertainty is heightened when it is considered which specific finger was supposedly chosen for mutilation. One correspondent, for example, stated that her great-grandfather chopped off his thumb to avoid being drafted but then went on to note that he worked as a butcher. It seems, here, more likely that this was an occupational accident. Afterall, why chop off a thumb—central to the basic grasping function of the hand—when taking off the tip of the index finger used for firing a weapon would have been enough? Why deliberately take off several fingers (to continue these grisly questions) when taking off one would do? Why the tip of the pinky finger which would not interfere with the holding and firing of a gun?

If the evidence from family stories is inconclusive concerning deliberate mutilation to avoid the Russian and Austria-Hungary military drafts between 1890-1918, so, too, are accounts in yizkor books of Eastern European shtetls. They, too, for the most part, do not provide corroboration of mutilation. The primary reason for this were the changes in Russian conscription legislation and the conditions of Austria-Hungary military service, that had occurred since the early nineteenth century.

Conscription Laws in Early Nineteenth Century

Whereas, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Jews in Russia paid a tax in lieu of military service, Czar Nicholas I, in 1827, issued his Statute on Conscription Duty that required Jewish military service for twenty-five years. (In 1834 military service was reduced to fifteen years.) Roughly four to eight conscripts were to be provided from each thousand Jewish subjects. While the age for conscription in the Russian Empire was between eighteen to thirty-five, Jews could be taken starting at age twelve. Those under eighteen were first placed in cantonist schools (schools for the children of soldiers) until they came of age and then began their military service.[14] Starting in 1843, these regulations also applied to Jews in the Kingdom of Poland that was under Russian rule.

The leaders of each kahal (local Jewish government) were responsible for drawing up the draft lists and selecting those who were to be conscripted. Often, the sons of more well to do families were omitted (either through bribery or through exemption since their fathers belonged to the merchant estate), and beggars, orphans, heretics, and outcasts were selected instead. A conscript could send a substitute in his place, but the substitute had to be a Jew. When, in the late 1840s through the mid 1850s, the number of required Jewish conscripts was quadrupled (especially with the start of the Crimean War), the kahal, in many instances, used khappers (catchers) to round up all eligible Jews, as well as those who were not, such as eight- to eleven-year-olds. All told, under Nicholas I, some 70,000 Jewish males—40,000 of them children—were conscripted into the Russian military between 1827-1855. While Jews in the army were legally entitled to observe Jewish holidays and keep Jewish observances, such was not the case for Jewish children in the cantonist schools. There, they had no support for continuing their Jewish practice and often were pressured to convert to Greek Orthodoxy.[15]

Compared to Russian regulations, military conscription laws under the Habsburg monarchy were relatively benign regarding the Jews of Galicia and other Habsburg territories. Under Joseph II, starting in 1788, Jews in the Habsburg Empire were expected to serve in the army and were able to become officers. Jewish draftees were to be between twenty-one and twenty-eight. Between 1790-1806 a tax in lieu of military service was paid, and in 1806 Jewish conscription resumed.[16]

Draft Evasion in Early Nineteenth Century

Given the onerous conditions in Russia, it is likely that some bodily mutilations took place there between 1827-1855 (during Nicholas I’s reign), rather than having children captured and sent to cantonist schools or for young men to endure twenty-five years or even fifteen years of military service. An 1835 secret report by the Chief of the Gendarmes in Vilna (Lithuania), for example, told of the increase by Jews in draft evasion techniques, “in particular, self-mutilation (a large part of the conscripts have several teeth removed).”[17] The Jewish historian, Simon Dubnow, in his history of the Jews in Poland and Russia, stated that many evaded conscription by chopping off their fingers or toes or damaging their eyesight. He quoted an account from this time: “The most tender-hearted mother…would place the finger of her beloved son under the kitchen knife of a home-bred quack surgeon.”[18] One correspondent wrote of a relative who had all of his teeth knocked out to avoid Russian conscription during the Crimean War (1853-1856). A former inhabitant of Hrozava (Belarus), related that he was a descendant of Rusha, a poor woman of the town, who cut off the finger of all of her sons when they were babies, to avoid their recruitment in the army, and a writer in the Vishnevets (Ukraine) yizkor book wrote about the mutilations that had occurred during the reign of Nicholas I, naming specific older individuals in the town who were missing a finger.[19]

Conscription in Late Nineteenth Century

With the ascension of Alexander II to the throne in 1855, there were radical changes in Russia’s conscription law. First, the cantonist schools were abolished in 1856, which eliminated the abduction and conscription of Jewish children under the age of eighteen. Then, in 1874, Alexander II issued his statue on universal military duty, which included the Jews. The key provision was the reduction of the term of military service to six years (followed by nine years in the reserve) and military service starting at age twenty-one. Nonetheless, the Jewish community was still required to provide another Jew in place of one that had been exempted, and if there was a shortage of Jewish recruits, Jews with a first-class exemption (i.e. higher education) could be drafted. Moreover, Jews, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century began to be barred from certain positions and duties within the Russian army and had reduced privileges after the completion of their service such as the freedom to live outside the Pale of Settlement. By 1905, arose charges that “all Jews were traitors, cowards, and useless soldiers.”[20]

Austria-Hungary also had changes in the conscription laws in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1868 Jews were included in universal conscription, consisting of three years of active duty (reduced to two years in 1912). They were able to serve as army physicians and as officers in the military. Austria-Hungary was not involved in large military conflicts between 1866-1914, meaning that there was, overall, little danger of losing one’s life in battle.

Thus, in light of these changes in conscription law that occurred both in Russia and Austria-Hungary during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Jewish historian Olga Litvak emphatically states: “No grandfather or great-uncle of any living Jewish person of Eastern European descent could possibly have encountered the dangers that his immediate progeny see fit to locate at the heart of their personal family mythology.”[21]

Draft Evasion in Late Nineteenth Century

Despite these changes, however, there was still reluctance on the part of many young Jewish men to serve in the Russian and Austria-Hungary armies. This was especially true in Russia, where, as noted above, there was continued discrimination against Jewish inductees and veterans. Memoirs in yizkor books relate the consternation caused by conscription, and the efforts made to avoid the draft. In Austria-Hungary, for example, around one-third of Jewish men in Galicia in 1871 who were eligible for military duty did not appear.[22] The Shumsk (Ukraine) yizkor book, tells of draft dodgers hiding in their town and being sheltered by the shtetl’s rabbi from military recruiters.[23]

In both Austria-Hungary and Russia there were numerous attempts to avoid conscription by failing the medical examination. One way was through bribery.[24] The Kamenetz-Podolsk (Ukraine) yizkor book told of meklers (go-betweens) in the early 1900s who were used to bribe military doctors on the medical examination panel.[25] A second method was histagfus (self-affliction). Several months before they were to present themselves before the medical examining board, the recruits, in an effort to look weak and sickly, would attempt to starve themselves, in some cases eating little more than sunflower seeds and a few buckwheat rusks. They would gather in small groups to attempt to stay up most of the night, gathering in the synagogue to either play games or recite psalms.[26] (Taking caffeine to get through the night in concert with excessive fasting, could produce tachycardia).[27] The conscripts would also get through the night by going out: marching from one end of the town to the other, roaming the streets singing, playing cards on park benches, drinking schnapps and dancing, and doing “dirty tricks.” These usually consisted of removing and exchanging the signs from shops and workshops, moving a teamster’s wagon to the home of a competitor, or moving firewood from one home to another. Wealthy residents were expected to contribute several coins for the recruits or else face damage to their homes and shops (such as removing the wooden front steps).[28]

In some shtetls, it appears that these night-time shenanigans did not have to do with self-affliction to avoid the draft but, rather, were engaged in by those who were resigned to conscription. In Vishograd (Poland), for example, the conscripts drank and ate during the night. Vishograd’s wealthier inhabitants, upon being told “You’re staying home, while we are off to serve the Tzar,” were expected not only to help fund the recruits’ feasting, but their needed purchases of boots, socks, and warm coats. Failure to do so resulted in night-time penalties, such as a giant boulder rolled against the front door of the recalcitrant.[29]

In addition to sleep deprivation and fasting, others rubbed their eyes with weeds, created stomach ailments or attempted to give themselves hernias to avoid the draft.[30] One correspondent wrote: “My grandfather was from Tomaszow Lubelski, Poland. He told us that he drank sauerkraut juice to upset his stomach and avoid the draft.” Another correspondent wrote: “My mother’s uncle drank large quantities of vinegar to get out of the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I,” while another related his grandfather’s tale of being conscripted into the Russian army in 1915, and then, to avoid being sent to the front, injected his knee with kerosene, causing it to blow up, that required hospitalization for months.

Accounts of maiming, however, are mostly absent from post-1874 draft evasion accounts (especially as had occurred in Russia during the reign of Nicholas 1). There are several reasons for this. First, during this later period, not all in the Jewish community saw military conscription as unfortunate. Horace Ginstburg, for example, a Jewish St. Petersburg notable, wrote in 1874 a front-page article in HaMagid, a Hebrew weekly, castigating those who sought to escape conscription since it interfered with opportunities for Jewish emancipation in the Russian empire.[31] A writer for the Hebrew paper HaMelitz wrote in 1878 that “military service would strengthen puny Jewish young men.”[32] A writer from Yanow (Belarus) in the 1890s, condemned the practice of holding a family celebration when a son was rejected for military service by the examiners: “When we do this, are we not giving an opportunity to our accusers to say of us that we do not take military service seriously and we are like strangers in the land?”[33] A writer from Rohatyn (Ukraine), recalled those who were taken into the army in the early 1900s: “Who does not recall those dear boys upon their return home or on leave? They stood straight and tall, powerful and broad-shouldered, their faces flushed with health.”[34]

Second, and most importantly, the crushing elements of military service had been eliminated: children were no longer being conscripted, there were no khappers, and the length of service had been drastically reduced. Third, self-mutilation would not always have guaranteed draft exemption. There were two grades of fitness for military service in Russia at this time: combat fitness and noncombatant fitness. Those with some degree of deformity could, in theory, be drafted and placed in noncombatant units. Some draft boards totally exempted those with disabilities; others did not.[35]

Finally, is that it was now possible to flee the draft by emigrating.[36] Some editorials in the Russian press, following the announcement of the 1874 conscription laws, focused on Jewish evasion of military service by fleeing to America.[37] “My grandfather, from Riga” (Latvia), stated one correspondent, “received his draft notice into the Russian army in November 1905. He arrived in New York on January 6, 1906.” Another wrote: “A doctor in Belarus told my great-grandmother (circa 1905/06) that he could maim her son. She refused the offer and made it possible for him to emigrate to America.” Indeed, according to the Russian historian, Oleg Budnitskii, in the years leading up to WWI, “Avoiding military service of the conscription of one’s children served as one of the main motivations for emigration.”[38] (This was not without its ramifications, since an 1876 law under Alexander II levied a fine of 300 rubles upon the family of one who had evaded military service.)[39] In addition to America, it was also possible for a hardy few to immigrate to Palestine.

Given these factors and options, for the most part, a decision to maim oneself would have been too extreme a measure to undertake after 1874. Three years of military service in Austria-Hungary or six years in Russia, while disruptive, would hardly occasion, for most, the decision to remove a finger, thumb, eye, or eardrum in order to avoid it.[40] Yet, it is possible that for a small number of potential conscripts, mutilation did take place. While self-mutilation to avoid military service during peace time does not seem reasonable, it might have been preferable to some when faced with possible death on the front lines during the Crimean War (1853-1856), Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and WWI (1914-1918). David Shkolnik from Melitopol (Ukraine), for example, who had been conscripted in 1911, wrote on the eve of World War I: “I had braced my heart to bear…military service…But to offer up my own life and the well-being of my family as a sacrifice …for this I have neither the strength nor the desire.”[41]

In support of this, an article in the Hebrew newspaper HaMelitz, warned Jewish men in 1880 against cutting off their fingers although it provided no specifics.[42] General A. I. Denikin, wrote that in Russia, in the years immediately before WWI, “there existed a number of underground ‘doctors’ willing to cut off toes, rupture eardrums, yank out teeth or even dislocate hip bones, all in order to help individuals avoid military service” but provided no details.[43] In 1913, at least suggesting that self-mutilation still was possible, the ethnographer S. An-sky’s asked Jewish residents in the Pale of Settlement: “Do people ever have to turn over those with deformities because it is suspected that the deformities are self-inflicted?”[44]

There are also accounts in yizkor books of self-maiming but, for the most part, they, too, are vague on dates and specific occurrences. Sirota, remembering Kozienice (Poland), stated that in the early 1900s, rather than be conscripted for four years, “Some would…chop off the toe of a foot, pull out all the teeth…everything and anything to avoid serving.” Jacob Maratek of Vishograd (Poland), wrote that in 1902, when he received his conscription notice, he was told of a man who could pull out all his teeth to exempt him. Abraham Rechtman wrote of his 1912/1913 interview in the Pale of Settlement with a man whose son, he was told, cut off his finger to avoid the draft.[45]  

Other accounts were even less specific. Abraham Stupp, writing of Jewish life in Tluste (Ukraine), told of twenty-one year old young men, not wanting to spend three years in the army, who “mutilated their bodies and lived all of their lives blind in one eye or with two fingers attached to their palm,” and Garmi in his memories of Luboml (Poland), in discussing attempts to gain draft exemptions, stated: There were also some who had themselves mutilated by persons especially given to that task…some cut off their right forefingers or mutilated themselves in other ways.” Schreier, in his memories of Tlumacz (Ukraine), stated: “Others went to such extremes as to deprive themselves of the sight of one eye or to lop off a finger—just so as not to be conscripted.”[46]

This lack of specific information makes the determination of reality difficult. When, for example, a writer in the yizkor book of Boiberke (Ukraine), recalled that in “earlier generations” fingers were cut off, and ears and knees damaged, it seems that he was simply reciting second-hand information.[47] The same thing is true of Charles (Zachariah) Goldberg’s Tales of Bialystok (Poland). Born in 1889, he related events from the 1850’s as though they were from his time and memory: “When the Russians realized that the Jews were not providing enough recruits…the government issued a decree that young boys were to be taken to fill the quota.” He also wrote of the khapers, who kidnapped children for conscription, and the makhers, who caused deliberate injuries to avoid the draft, all of which took place forty years before his birth.[48]

Conclusions

When evaluating family stories of efforts taken by ancestors to avoid military conscription in Eastern Europe, their residence should first be determined. For the most part, stories of serious mutilation taking place in Galicia, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century should be regarded as unlikely. When it comes to residence in Russia, the claim that some young Jewish men (and younger teens) had body parts mutilated to avoid the draft in the first half of the nineteenth century, especially between the late 1840s to the mid 1850s, is plausible. The claim, however, that a specific family member did so from 1880-1918 is highly unlikely unless proven otherwise. These stories gain some credence if they can be shown to coincide with specific Russian wartime periods of 1877-1878, 1904-1905, and 1914-1918. Finally, stories of self-affliction and deprivation, as well as emigration in order to avoid the draft in both Russia and Austria-Hungary during the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century are likely to have occurred.

A more critical approach to evaluating the veracity of family stories is not to diminish the genuine suffering in Jewish communities resulting from Nicholas I’s conscription policies in Russia during the early nineteenth century, nor the real fears of young Jews in the late nineteenth century in Russia and Austria-Hungary concerning military service. But it does underscore that self-mutilation throughout Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century in response to military conscription was the exception, not the norm.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Bruce Drake, JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, for his invaluable help in locating yizkor books that contained conscription stories; to Adam Rosenthal, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Los Angeles library, for his research assistance; and to the many members of JewishGen for sharing their family stories.

About the Author

Jeff Marx is the author of a number of monographs on American Jewish history, and is the compiler of the HaMagid Donor Lists database on JewishGen. He can be reached at Rabjmarx@gmail.com.

[1]  Derek J. Penslar, Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton University Pres, 2013), 28.

[2] Just as in 1969, during the Viet Nam war, apocryphal stories circulated of the various stratagems successfully used at military induction centers in order to be granted a deferment, so, too here. Richard Dorson, America in Legend: Folklore from the Colonial Period to the Present (Knopf, Doubleday, 1974), 305-309.

[3] See Olga Litvak’s detailed and penetrating examination of how Jewish literary works, beginning in 1859, were responsible for creating the myths about the Russian Jewish conscription experience. Olga Litvak Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry (Indiana University Press, 2006). See also, in this regard, Adina Ofek, “Cantonists: Jewish Children as Soldiers in Tsar Nicholas’s Army,” Modern Judaism 13, No. 3 (1993): 277-308. For a late twentieth century poem, in which the author (b.1944) muses how his grandfather had his finger cut off to escape “the 20+ years’ exile in the Czar’s army” (that length of service ended by 1874, long before his grandfather’s birth), and his 2^nd great-grandfather was mutilated by a Crippler so to cause both deafness and muteness in order to be exempted from the Russian army (one deformity would have been enough, suggesting, rather, that this was a congenital defect), see “The Crippler,” in Danny Siegel, And God Braided Eve’s Hair (United Synagogue of America, 1976). Curiously, though there were rabbinic rulings on the permissibility of having a substitute take one’s place, and on the permissibility of allowing oneself to be conscripted, there were no rabbinic responsa from the nineteenth century that dealt with the question of self-mutilation to avoid conscription. See Judith Bleich, “Rabbinic Responses to Conscription,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 39, No. 4 (2006): 29-56.

[4] Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 3.

[5] At the same time, Zionist ideology valorized Jewish warriors from ancient Israel. Max Nordau, “Muskeljudentum,” Juedische Turnzeitung, June 1903, in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz (Oxford University Press, 1995), 547; Penslar, Jews and the Military, 6-7. See, also, Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (Basic Books, 1990), 50, 132-135.

[6] In regard to the acculturate-assimilate dialectic, reflecting the tensions between the promises of the Russian enlightenment and the realities of Jewish emancipation, see Litvak, Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry.

[7] Penslar, Jews and the Military, 28.

[8] I am also reminded, here, of the number of Jews in America who persist in their mistaken belief that their ancestor’s family name was changed at Ellis Island.

[9] See, in this regard, Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 6. 

[10] Israel Augenblick, “I Remember: Nostalgic Memories of Half a Century in New York,” unpublished ms., 1965, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.

[11] Names of towns and cities mentioned in this paper are followed, in parentheses, by their present-day locations. 

[12] Not included in this count are stories such as “my grandfather told me about boys who cut off fingers so they couldn’t pull triggers.”

[13] This uncertainty also applies to a Jewish relic that S. An-sky, an early Jewish ethnographer, obtained between 1912-194: a petrified amputated finger from an old man in Proskurov (Ukraine), who stated that he had it severed to avoid conscription. Deutsch, The Jewish Dark Continent, 48.

[14] Jews were not alone in being enrolled in cantonist schools. By 1853 there were over three hundred thousand Christian cantonists. Penslar, Jews and the Military, 28. See also Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia 1825-1855 (Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983), 18-19.

[15] Salo W. Baron, The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets (Macmillan, 1976), 29-30; Simon M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland From the Earliest Times Until the Present Day, Vol. II, translated by I. Friedlaender (Jewish Publication Society of America, 1918), 147-149; Natan M. Meir, Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and the Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939 (Stanford University Press, 2020), 51-61; Penslar, Jews and the Military, 28-29; Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “Military Service in Russia,” The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 September 2010, https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Military_Service_in_Russia.\; Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 55; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 360-361; Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews, 18-21, 184. See also an 1835 description of the eight and nine-year-old Jewish conscripts in My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, Vol. 1, translated by Constance Garnett (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 219-220.

[16] Peter C. Appelbuam, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army 1788-1918 (Cherry Orchard Books, 2022), xvi, 25, 37-38.

[17] “Secret Report of the Chief of the Gendarmes in Vil’na” (10 November 1835), in Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia: Selected Documents 1772-1914, edited by ChaeRan Y. Freeze and Jay M. Harris (Brandeis University Press, 2013, 520-521. See also Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 56, regarding “finger epidemics.”

[18] Dubnow, History of the Jews, 146. See also Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews, 32.

[19] S. Alexandroni, “Hrozava,” in Pinkas Slutsk u-benoteha (Slutsk and Vicinity Memorial Book), edited by N. Chinitz, and Sh. Nachmani (Privately printed, 1962), 188-189; M. Averbukh, “Vishnevets in a Trick Mirror,” translated by Tina Lunson, in Sefer Vishnivits: Sefer Zikaron Likedoshei Vishnivits Shenispu Beshoa’at Hanatsim (Memorial Book of Vishnevets [Vishnevets, Ukraine] (Privately printed, 1970), 461. See also Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 59.

[20] John Doyle Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855-1881, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 342-343; Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “Military Service in Russia” (quote); See also Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 431; Lee Shai Weissbach, ed., A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden (Stanford University Press, 2013), 52.

[21] Litvak, Conscription, 4. 

[22] Penslar, Jews and the Military, 48. See also Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Vol. 1 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 254-255, 287.

[23] Rafael Sapir, “Rabbi Beirinyo,” in Szumsk Sefer Zicharon Le-Kedoshei Szumsk (Szumsk Memorial Book of the Martyrs of Szumsk) [Shumsk, Ukraine], edited by H. Rabin, (Privately printed, 1968), 181.

[24] Garmi, “Remembrances,” 55, and “The Recruits,” 167, in Luboml [Luboml, Poland]: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl, edited by Berl Kagan (Ktav, 1997); Spiegel, “Within the Town,” 138; Lee Shai Weissbach, ed., A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden [Kvatki, Lithuania], (Stanford University Press, 2013), 52.

[25] Leon S. Blatman, “The City I knew in My Youth,” in Kamenetz-Podolsk: A Memorial to a City Annihilated by the Nazis [Kamenetz-Podolsk, Ukraine], edited by Leon S. Blatman, (Privately printed, 1966), 54.

[26] Yisroel Garmi, “Remembrances,” in Luboml [Luboml, Poland]: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl, edited by Berl Kagan (Ktav, 1997), 55; Daniel Kac, Fun Ash Aroysgerufn, (Warsaw, 1983), translated by Gloria Berksenstat Freund as “Summoned from the Ashes, 24; Marilyn Levinson, “Military Conscription in Lipkan,” translated by Khane Faygl Turtletaug, in Lipkan fun Amol (Lipcan of Old [Lipcani, Moldova]), edited by Aaron Shuster (Eagle Publishing, 1957), 80-83; Y. Tz. Yaakov Tzidkoni, “Episodes,” translated by Jerrold Landau, in Memorial Book of Sochaczew, Poland, edited by A. Sh. Sztejyn and G. Wejszman (Privately printed, 1962), 724. 

[27] Penslar, Jews and the Military, 49. See also the memoir of Leiba Abramovich Iagudin in Oleg Budnitskii, Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 129-130.

[28] Netkah Blaushtein-Gutfroynd, “Amusing Memories,” translated by Deborah Schultz, In Kalusz: Hayeha ve-Hurbana shel Ha-Kehila (Kalush: The Life and Destruction of the Community), [Kalusz, Poland] edited by Shabtain Unger and Moshe Etinger (Kalusz Society, 1980),179-180; Avraham Fisher, “Tormentors,” translated by Theodore Steinberg, in Le-zekher Kehilat Bobrka u-benoteha (Boiberke Memorial Book) [Bobrka, Ukraine], edited by Sharaga Feivel Kallay (Sivan Press, 1964), 169; Kac, Fun Ash

 Aroysgerufn, 24-25; Levinson, “Military Conscription in Lipkan,” 84-86; Ephraim Schreier, “The Abstinence,” in Tlumacz-Tlomitsch Sefer Edut-ve-Zkaron (Memorial Book of Tlumacz [Tlumach, Ukraine]) edited by Shlomo Bond, et al (Tlumacz Society,1976), 41; Yehoshua Spiegel, “Within the Town,” translated by Binyamin Weiner, in Kehilat Rohatyn v’Hasviva (The Community of Rohatyn and Environs [Rogatin, Ukraine]), edited by M. Amihai (Rohatyn Association of Israel, 1962), 138.

[29] Shimon and Anita Wincelberg, The Samurai of Vishogrod: The Notebooks of Jacob Marateck (Jewish Publication Society, 1976), 81-83.

[30] ”Hernia Among Russian Army Recruits,” Journal of the American Medical Association 16 (April 18, 1891), 560; Schreier, “The Abstinence,” 41.

[31] Benjamin Nathan, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (University of California Press, 2002), 181-182.

[32] HaMelitz, November 8, 1878, 359-65, quoted in Penslar, Jews and the Military, 32-33.

[33] Israel Tzvi Pisar, “Letters about Janow from the 1890s,” in Janow al yad Pinsk: Sefer Zikaron (Yanow near Pinsk [Ivanava, Belarus]: Memorial Book), edited by Mordechai Nadav (Association of Former Residents of Janow near Pinsk in Israel, 1969).

[34] Spiegel, “Within the Town,” 138.

[35] Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 143-144; A. Radetskii, “Recruits Ineligible to Serve,” Voennyi Sbornik, No. 11, 1885, 110-112.

[36] Israel Matz, “My Home Town, Kalvarija,” translated by Gloria Bekenstat Freund, in Lite, edited by Mendel Sudarsky, Uriah Katzenelenbogen, J. Kissin, et al (Jewish-Cultural Society, 1951), 1499-1501; Chava Vardi-Yoelit, “The Weapons that were Hidden in our House,” translated by Jerrold Landau, in Orhevev be-vinyana u-be-hurbana (Orheyev Alive and Destroyed) [Orhei, Moldava], edited by Y. Spivak (Privately printed, 1959), 120-123.

[37] Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 340-341.

[38]  Budnitskii, Russian Jews, 128.

[39]  Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1844-1917, (Posner and Sons, 1981), 37.

[40] See, in this regard, Petrovsky-Shtern, Jews in the Russian Army, 151.

[41] Budnitskii, Russian Jews, 130.

[42] HaMelitz, July 8, 1880, 290-95, in Penslar, Jews and the Military, 31.

[43] Budnitskii, Russian Jews, 129.

[44] S. An-sky, Dos Yidishe Ethnografishe Program, Ershter teyl: der Mentsh (1914), translated in Nathaniel Deutsch, The Jewish Dark Continent (Harvard University Press, 2011), 191.

[45]  Schreier, “The Abstinence,” 41; Yerachmiel Sirota, “The Military Conscription in Kozienice,” in Sefer Zikaron le-Kehilat Kosznitz (Memorial Book of Kozienice), edited by Baruch Kaplinksi, Zelig Berman, Mordekhai Donnerstein, et al (Privately printed, 1985), 398-399; Abraham Rechtman, Yidishe Etnografye un Folklor (YIVO, 1958), 47; Wincelberg, The Samurai of Vishogrod, 80.

[46]  Garmi, “Remembrances,” 55; Schreier, “The Abstinence,” 41; Abraham Stupp, “Life in Jewish Tluste,” in Sefer Tluste (Memorial Book of Tluste) [Tovste, Ukraine], edited by G. Lindenberg (Privately printed, 1965), 17-31.

[47] Avraham Fisher, “Tormentors,” 170.

[48] Charles (Zachariah) Goldberg, Tales of Bialystok: A Jewish Journey from Czarist Russia to America, translated by Phyllis Goldberg Ross, Rootstock Publishing, 2017, 15-16.