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I did not know him at that time. His patron complained that Jacob had persisted in reciting Hebrew prayers, and that he abstained from meat. Jacob was condemned to twenty lashes with rods. An order was issued that all Cantonists should assemble to witness the flogging of the offender. In the course of time we got used to such sights; but the first time we were terribly shocked.
Squadron upon squadron issued from the inner recesses of Russia, and marched towards the battlefields of the South, marched to the slaughter, into the mouths of the cannons of the English and French, who knew how to conquer without penal conscriptions and without inflicting tortures upon tender-aged cantonists.
About 1845 he changed his views, became an ardent Greek Catholic, and converted five hundred Cantonists, to the great delight of Nicholas I, who thanked him in person for his zeal. He lost his leg, and during the long illness that followed Nachlass settled in Novgorod, and wrote several works on Jewish customs and on missionary topics.
The abolition of juvenile conscription followed automatically upon the annulment, by virtue of the same Coronation Manifesto, of the general Russian institution of "cantonists" and "soldier children," who were now ordered to be returned to their parents and relatives.
The great Russian writer saw the Jewish cantonists on the road, but he knew nothing of what happened to them later on, in the recesses of the barracks into which they were driven. This terrible secret was revealed to the world at a later period by the few survivors among these martyred Jewish children.
Infants were torn from their mothers, boys of the age of twelve, sometimes of ten and eight, were herded like cattle, sent to distant parts of Russia, and there distributed as chattels among the officers of the army. Many of these Cantonists, as they were called, either died on the way, or were killed off when they resisted conversion.
He put the piece of pork into my mouth. I looked up, terror-stricken, to my father, but he smiled. His smile filled the place with light. He said to me, 'Eatest thou this of thy own free will? Then he began to soar upwards, and called out to me from afar: 'Tell all thy comrades, the Cantonists: Your reward is great. Every sigh of yours is a prayer, every good thought of yours is a good action!
The Jews, enslaved by pre-reformatory Russia, died for a fatherland which treated them as pariahs, which had bestowed upon them a monstrous conscription, the unexampled institutions of cantonists, penal recruits, and "captives."
I knew I was guilty of eating pork and of other grave trespasses, and I felt quite unworthy of being a member of the pious congregation. Meanwhile little Reuben discovered the contents of my bag. "Boys, grub!" exclaimed he, excitedly. At the word "grub" the congregation was thrown into a flutter. That was the way of the Cantonists.
Nor was the old historic crime made good: the Jewish cantonists who had been forcibly converted to the Greek-Orthodox faith were not allowed to return to their kindred.
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