Mordecai Marches to Manchuria

• In Event: Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities Workshop

Abstract

In 1898, Mordecai Jacobovitch, a twenty-one year old Polish bookbinder, was conscripted into the 9th Rifleman’s Brigade of the Czar’s army.

In June of 1900 the Boxers laid siege to Peking’s (now Beijing’s) diplomatic quarter with the support of the Empress Tzu Hsi. This "Boxer Rebellion" resulted in one of the first multi-national military efforts. It also provided Russia with an opening to invade Manchuria, a territory they had long-desired.

On June 26th, 1900, Mordecai and his comrades were informed that they were to begin a march to Manchuria that would eventually bring them home again by land and sea in a 10- month campaign.

Mordecai and his fellow Jewish soldiers from Poland and Russia were both celebrated and cheated by their fellow Jews in various villages along the way. They were forced to fight on Yom Kippur and they recognized fellow Jews in Singapore by the matzah crumbs on their faces during Pesach. They survived several bouts of scurvy and other illnesses and had many other adventures thoughout the campaign.

In 1986, a handwritten record of Mordecai’s experience was found. It was written in Russian script and composed in a mélange of Polish, Yiddish and Russian, including some little known dialects. It took the family decades to find someone who could do the translation.

In 2015 digital copies of the diary’s pages and the full translation were shared with YIVO. YIVO’s assessment was that the memoir’s content covered portions of Jewish and Yiddish history and language that they, and most other academic institutions, had little information on.

Mordecai Marches to Manchuria is a website, (currently in development) that will display each section of the translated text with a map of the journey and contemporary and historical images of the places Mordecai visited on the campaign. A complete set of scans of the original pages will also be available on the site.

Author

• Stephen Jacobs, Rochester Institute of Technology