The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank) 1894-1915:
Bribery on the part of Jews seeking to evade the multitude of special laws concerning them became a way of life… Many conscientious police officials and members of the judiciary came to consider the Jews a troublesome and corrupt people, forever importuning the authorities with petitions, protests, and bribes. The courts were crowded with Jewish criminals and litigants, quite aside from those arrested for revolutionary activity, incurring the ire of over-worked officials…
Matters were not made any easier, he remarked, by the notorious vehemence of the Jewish petitioners. They were not…a passive and fatalistic people. The governor…was struck by their wild gesticulations (especially the women) — “so that one had to back away from them” — and their shrill demands for immediate action…
The Russian police force was required to devote a major part of its energies to enforcing the myriad of often contradictory regulations that applied to the Jews. Jews themselves naturally were tempted to evade laws that they considered grossly unfair, indeed that in some cases made it nearly impossible for them to earn an honest living. Since many ordinary Jews in Russia were obliged to become “criminals” in order to survive, the attitude of many other Jews to the law in a more general way inevitably became evasive or even contemptuous. Jews gained a reputation of being inveterate liars and dissimulators when dealing with the authorities. A Yiddish-language paper in the United States wrote that even after leaving Russia and dealing with American or German authorities, “Our Jews love to get tangled up with dishonest answers,” or they get themselves into trouble by offering bribes to officials unaccustomed to receiving them. (Pg. 150-151)
