Stop Your Cruel Oppression of the Jews.
Emil Flohri, Judge, September 1905.
Source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004671428/
When I present my work on the Jewish migration, I like using this cartoon in order to illustrate the traditional thesis that the Jewish migration from the Pale of Settlement was caused by the pogroms. It shows a Jewish town, on that right, that was hit by a pogrom, and a stream of Jewish refugees fleeing it on their way to become immigrants in the United States. The cartoon is interesting in its own right, and I wanted to share my thoughts on how I understand it.
It was published in Judge, one of two U.S. leading satirical magazines that regularly commented on political events with writings, illustrations, and cartoons. The scene on the top left shows President Theodore Roosevelt reproaching Tsar Nikolai II: “Stop your cruel oppression of the Jews,” and “Now that you have peace without, why not remove his burden and have peace within your borders?”. The cartoon was published in late September 1905. The immediate context was the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth a few weeks earlier. The treaty was brokered by President Roosevelt and brought the Russo-Japanese War to an official end. Roosevelt, leveraging on his diplomatic achievement, is depicted reminding the Tsar to correct another issue that tainted Russia’s relations with Britain and the United States—the suppression of the Jewish minority in Russia. This was one month before a massive wave of hundreds of pogroms swept through the Pale of Settlement, bringing the anti-Jewish violence to its worst pitch ever since Jews were brought under the dominion of the Tsars.
The artist who created the cartoon was Emil Flohri (1869-1938). He had been a political cartoonist since he was sixteen years old, and during the last decade of his life he became a pioneer in the new medium of animation, the man behind Mickey Mouse. More precisely, Walt Disney’s chief background designer.
Emil Flohri, 1931.
Drawn by animator Jack King.
Source: http://afilmla.blogspot.com/2009/04/backgrounds-in-1931_19.html
The cartoon is quite masterful, with an intelligent composition of three scenes in different zooms (the pogrom, the migration, and the two leaders), all woven into a single continuous image. Text is used within and outside the frame to explain the more complex concepts, such as the specific modes of oppression (autocracy, cruelty, etc.), or to label Roosevelt and the Russian Jew. But some of these concepts are conveyed through visual means. The link between the burden carried by the old Jewish man and the Tsar himself is made explicit by the shape of the weights that are added over the heavy sack the Jew carries: they are topped with crowns that clearly replicate the crown of Tsar Nikolai himself.
The image of the old Jewish man deliberately resonates with the traditional iconography of the archetype of The Wandering Jew (see image below), the tragic protagonist of the popular medieval legend. After insulting Christ on his last walk through the Via Dolorosa, he was cursed to wander upon the face of the earth until the second coming of Christ without finding a home and a rest. The choice to use the iconography of the Wandering Jew amounts to a comment on the condition of the Jews: they have no home and are destined to be eternal migrants.
The Wandering Jew, Gustave Doré (1856).
A drawing for The Legend of the Wandering Jew.
The traditional figure of the Wandering Jew carries a certain measure of despise, as the condition of eternal wandering was a divine punishment inflicted for denying Christ and insulting him. It is often depicted in a derogative way, with stereotypical negative Jewish attributes. Indeed, it became the model for many anti-Semitic depictions of Jews since the second half of the nineteenth century. None of this is apparent in Flohri’s cartoon. The attributes of the Jew are a long white beard, earlocks, and a head cover, but neither he nor his fellows behind him seem morally crooked or deserving of their punishment. Instead, the face of the Jew projects respectability, tiredness, and a sad acceptance of his destiny. Despite his old age and the burden he carries, he still walks with a wide step while looking forward, perhaps suggesting that the vitality of the Jews cannot be overcome by their misfortunes.
Further Reading
Scant information on Flohri’s work is posted by early animation enthusiasts:
Backgrounds in 1931, in Hans Perk’s A. Film L.A. blog
Yannay Spitzer 
shulim71@yahoo.com
January 21, 2014
Interesting also as an explanation of the Jews as part of American foreign policy (before Obama). Mutatis mutandis, I can imagine the same drawing with Bush, Ahmadinejad and a family of Israelis in the middle of a pigua… Just exile sufferings turn into terror sufferings… though, by saying that Israel is not a jewish land it also says that jews are dammned to wandering…
Yannay Spitzer
January 21, 2014
It’s not clear to me how much of it was worry for the condition of the Jews, and how much of it was attempts to curb the incentive for immigration. But both in Britain and the US there were strong movements, not only of Jews, who were alaramed by what happened in Russia.
Ari Kinsberg
February 4, 2014
I know the image was published in 1905, but how do you account for the 1904 copyright date? I’ve seen one comment that this image was a specific reaction to the Kishinev Pogrom, but then why the lag to publication?
Yannay Spitzer
February 4, 2014
I am not sure why it says 1904 on the LOC website, but this cartoon could not have been published before September 1905, as it relates to events that happened then. Kishinev became a symbol of Jewish persecution in Russia, and this persisted beyond the immediate aftermath of the pogrom (I understand that Prof. Steven Zipperstein of Stanford is now writing a book on this topic). You can see another example from the same month of a cartoon published by the competing Journal Puck: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011645734/.
Again, the immediate context is the signing of the peace treaty between Japan and Russia (Sept. 1905), but there’s nevertheless a direct reference to the Kishinev Pogrom that took place two years and a half earlier.
By the way, the “Jewish Loans” are the loans made by the New York-based Jewish banker Jacob Schiff to the Japanese government. These were needed to finance the war, and Schiff explicitly linked his support to Japan to Kishinev and the persecution of Russian Jews.
Ari Kinsberg
February 5, 2014
the 1904 copyright isn’t from LOC; it appears on the image itself (bottom left corner). the sub-caption indicates a post portsmouth date (Sept. 1905), but maybe the image itself is earlier and the caption was added later. what i though was interesting is that Judge was infamous for its anti-semitic depictions a generation earlier, but this image appears completely sympathetic and lacks stereotypes or caricatures typical even of non-anti-semitic illustrated magazines of the period.
the Puck image you linked to with the reference to schiff’s loans is interesting. there is a contemporary article in a different magazine that reprinted the Judge image and noted that Russia’s problems with Japan could be solved if it would treat the Jews better.” i assume this was an oblique reference to the schiff loans.
Yannay Spitzer
February 5, 2014
I see—I am guessing that the date by the copyright note can be explained by the practice of declaring the copyrights, and that it need not be the year of the actual publication.
You are probably right about the article that cites this cartoon and the loans (I would be interested to have the reference).
There’s another Puck cartoon that I know from 1912 that deals with a related issue that caused contention between the US and Russia: Jews who immigrated to the US and gained American citizenship came back to Russia and used the trade treaties with the US to overcome the restrictions of the Pale of Settlement. The Russian bureaucracy tried to restrict their movement outside the Pale. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011649110/.
This cartoon is far less generous: The Jew who tries to enter Moscow wears an Uncle Sam mask and carries an American passport, but his stereotypical negative attributes (including the accent) are clearly showing out.