their burning national sorrow was a religious demonstration within the
walls of the synagogue.


3. MILITARY MARTYRDOM

The ways and means by which the provisions of the military statute were
carried into effect during the reign of Nicholas I. we do not learn from
official documents, which seem to have drawn a veil over this dismal
strip of the past. Our information is derived from sources far more
communicative and nearer to truth--the traditions current among the
people. Owing to the fact that every Jewish community, at the mutual
responsibility of all its members, was compelled by law to supply a
definite number of recruits, and that no one was willing to become a
soldier of his own volition, the Kahal administration and the recruiting
"trustees," who had to answer to the authorities for any shortage in
recruits, were practically forced to become a sort of police agents,
whose function it was to "capture" the necessary quota of recruits.
Prior to every military conscription, the victims marked for prey, the
young men and boys of the burgher class, [1] very generally took to
flight, hiding in distant cities, outside the zone of their Kahals, or
in forests and ravines. A popular song in Yiddish refers to these
conditions in the following words;

[Footnote 1: Compare on the status of the burgher in Russian law Vol. I,
p. 308, n. 2. Nearly all the higher estates were exempt.]

_Der Ukas is arobgekumen auf judische Selner,
Seinen mir sich zulofen in die puste Wälder.....
In alle puste Wälder seinen mir zulofen,