Jacob Schiff Visits Witte at Wentworth

Jacob Schiff was the head of the international banking concern Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. To protest the pogroms and other outrages the Russian government was wielding against Russian Jews, he had convinced fellow American bankers not to fund Russian war bonds. He had been less successful in Europe where the Rothschilds, for example, feared that such actions would make it harder on their Jewish countrymen at home. With Schiff at Wentworth were Oscar Strauss (whom TR later made Secretary of Commerce – the first Jewish Cabinet member), the industrialist Adolph Lewisohn, Adolph Kraus of Chicago (later president of the executive committee of the national B’nai B’rith) and Isaac Seligman of J&W Seligman & Co. an international banker with offices in New York and London.

 

Recalling the meeting with Witte to the national B’nai B’rith assembly, Adolph Kraus commented that in 1905 some members of the American Jewish community thought that their complaints to the Czar should be more deferential, while others felt the time was now to take a more forceful stand. Clearly Schiff, whom Witte described as pounding on the table in the room at Wentworth By the Sea where they met, took the more radical position. 

 

Over the past two years, Kirill Finkelshteyn, a recently arrived Russian in Boston has assisted with research on a member of the Russian delegation – Gregory Vilenkin, who attended the same St. Petersburg school as his father. Vilenkin was Jewish, from an old Russian family and was married to the daughter of one of the Seligman bankers in London. Isaac Seligman who came to Wentworth with Schiff was his wife’s uncle. Vilenkin was sent to New York in 1904 as a financial agent of the Russian government, hoping he could favorably influence American bankers to support Russian war bonds. It was Witte as the Russian Minister of Finance in 1895 who had taken a personal interest in Vilenkin’s career, making him assistant financial agent of the Russian government in London. Perhaps because Witte’s wife, whom he adored, was Jewish, too.

 

Gregory Vilenkin pictured, seated to left, behind Witte.

At one point in the Wentworth meeting Schiff pointed to Vilenkin (who acted in Portsmouth as Witte’s interpreter) and said to Witte, “Will you please tell me why you as a Russian have all the rights in that country which are given to any one and why this man has no rights whatsoever?” According to Kraus, who reported the meeting in the Bnai Brith Annual Report and Korostovetz who recalled the meeting in his diary, the immediate result was what the Jewish delegation sought: that Witte would relay their message to the Czar.

Three days after the meeting, Kraus received a letter from Vilenkin saying, “I am officially instructed by his Excellency Mon de Witte to inform you and the gentlemen who met him with you, that after your departure he cabled to St. Petersburg … to inquire whether any changes were made … concerning ‘the rights of the Jews to elect and be elected in the proposed National Assembly.’ His Excellency received by cable answer that… Jews will have the same right as the rest of the population to elect and be elected in the National Assembly.”  In October 1905, as Prime Minister of Russia (and after earning the title of Count for concluding the Portsmouth Peace Treaty in September), Witte convinced the Czar to accept the “four freedoms” Manifesto to end the mass workers’ strike and moderate the government’s harsh treatment and denial of human rights.