<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
[[wollen tassel from the prayer coat]] and tefillin [[leather
straps with prayers]] 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 labor
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)
