432 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY . 



HEBREW, MAGYAR AXD LEVANTINE IMMIGRATION. 



By Dr. ALLAN MCLAUGHLIN, 



U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH AND MARINE HOSPITAL SERVICE. 



Hebrew Immigration. 



r T1HE persecution of the Hebrew race finds no parallel in history. 

 -*~ Other races have suffered at the hands of the conqueror, but 

 these other persecutions are transient and intermittent compared with 

 the persistent persecution to which the Jew has been subjected for 

 centuries. One thousand years before Strongbow landed in Ireland, 

 Titus destroyed Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands of its brave de- 

 fenders and carried many thousands more as prisoners to fight the 

 beasts in the arena or serve as slaves in the Eoman galleys. 



It may be said that persecution of this race has never since ceased. 

 No century of the christian era passed without its record of persecu- 

 tion of the Jew. Adrian, Trajan and their successors kept up the 

 work begun by Titus, and the first real respite from persecution was 

 secured to the Jew by the conquests of that Semitic conqueror, Mahomet. 

 But while the Jew was respected and his work in science and letters 

 encouraged by the Saracens in Asia and Africa, he was being perse- 

 cuted consistently by christians in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and 

 England. This persecution continued throughout the period of the 

 Crusades and down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. 



Napoleon I. was one of the first sovereigns in Europe to cease dis- 

 criminating against the Jew, and extend to him the rights of citizen- 

 sliip. Since that time other countries, notably England, have removed 

 the ban from the Jew. In Poland the Jew was not persecuted to any 

 extent previous to the partition of Poland, but with the beginning of 

 Russian domination in Poland and Lithuania, one million Jews came 

 under the iron rule of the Czar. Jews had existed in Russia from very 

 early times, but most of the Russian Jews of to-day are descendants of 

 the Jews who lived in Poland and Lithuania before those countries be- 

 came a part of Russia. When one reads of the history of the Jewish 

 race, with its story of persecution, cruelty and discrimination, a feeling 

 • >f wonder and admiration must be felt for this remarkable people, 

 which, in spite of almost universal oppression, exists to-day as the 

 purest racial type in the world, and which furnishes the world with 

 more than its share of great men in finance, art, music, science and 

 literature. 



