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1 PO JM 1590-1589 via Coml

Sheet 3

Stockholm, May 10, 1916.

The Presidents:

even attempted to redeem the promise granting autonomy to Poland given at the beginning of this war by the commander-in-chief. It was not the enemy but
Russian troops who in a senseless way destroyed entire districts, plundered and fired the Polish country. It is the Russian goverment who drove a great
portion of the population away into the interior of Russia there now a million
and a half are left to misery and ruin. We Jews of Russia have been enslaved
like no other people on the face of this earth. We are deliberately exposed
to mental and physical dread. We are largely forbidden by law to attend
schools and universities. Crowded together in special appointed districts
we have been exposed by the goverment to ever increasing poverty and misery; from time to tine, and infuriated mob was let loose on us whose bestial instincts found an outlet in many bloody programs. During the war hundreds and thousands of us have been driven away from our homes and many thousands have died in distress; our homes have been plundered and daily more and more Jews are perishing in nameless misery. We Oukrainians have been deprived of our granted autonomy. The independence of our church has been destroyed. Even the language of such an highly educated people of 30 millions has been banished from public life and schools. At the beginning of the war all educational societies were dissolved and the press entirely suppressed. During the occupation of Galicia and the Bukowina the ill-will of the Russian government towards our people found an undisguised expression in the persecution of every form Oukranian national life a large mmber of Prominent patriots were arrested and a sever Russinization was systematically carried out. And with all that the

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