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“A Generation of Monsters”: Jews, Prostitution, and Racial Purity in the 1892 L'viv White Slavery Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

Keely Stauter-Halsted
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Extract

“How long will the jackals continue to feed upon our live bodies?” So begins a Polish newspaper's depiction of the rapacious activities of twenty-seven alleged international traffickers on trial for transporting girls from Austrian Galicia to brothels and harems in the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Aft er years of veiled discussion in the Polish-language press about the mysterious disappearance of poor female workers and peasant daughters, the case erupted in the fall of 1892, with lasting implications for the way trafficking and the domestic sex trade would be understood in the Habsburg lands and the former Polish territories alike. Seventeen men and ten women—all of them Jewish—stood trial for a decades-long conspiracy to scour the Crownland in search of “human goods” and “sell them to … local public houses or transport [them] abroad.” The affair helped define the public's perception of the sex trade in Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1930, as thousands of young women were smuggled out of the region and into sexual servitude. The trial played out in the Galician administrative capital of L'viv, a city of mixed Polish, Jewish, German, and Ukrainian population. Trial transcripts and newspaper coverage provide a rare glimpse into the secret world of commercial sex at the turn of the twentieth century. More importantly, commentary from the journalists and local citizens attending the proceedings offers a window into the way the Galician public understood the commercial sex trade, a tolerated practice that employed medical doctors, police inspectors, landlords, pimps, and procurers, alongside the prostitutes themselves. The trial attracted attention as far away as Cracow, Warsaw, and Vienna, where the Austrian parliament devoted a fiery session to its outcome and to a discussion of the “shameful outrages of the Jewish people” in the aff air. In the Galician setting, public exposure to the horrors of international prostitution networks contributed to a new and more militant direction in Polish nationalist sentiment, one that inextricably linked sexuality with ethnicity.

Type
Forum: Writing the History of Sexuality in Fin-de-Siècle Cisleithania
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 38 , January 2007 , pp. 25 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2007

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References

1 “Handlarze kobiet” [Traffickers in women], Słowo [The word], 31 July 1891, 4.

2 Estimates of the number of women leaving Europe each year to work as prostitutes abroad vary widely. Contemporary observers believed that 8,000 to 10,000 young women and girls were exported from Galicia annually, many of them having crossed into the Crownland initially from southeastern Russia. Numerous contemporary sources emphasize the wide idiomatic use of the term polaca for prostitute in parts of Latin America. See Bertha Pappenheim's figures in “Kroniki” [Local news], Nowe Słowo [The new word], 15 May 1903, 224–25. For more general accounts, see Posner, Stanis?ław, Nad otchłania: w sprawie handlu żywym towarem [On the abyss: The problem of the trade in human goods] (Warsaw, 1903), 90–91Google Scholar; Macko, Józef, Prostytucja [Prostitution] (Warsaw, 1927), 347–52Google Scholar; and Wagener, Major H., Mädchenhandel (Berlin, 1911)Google Scholar. On “polacas,” see especially Vincent, Isabel, Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas (New York, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 “Handarze Kobiet” [Traffickers in women], Słowo, 31 July 1891, 4.

4 Commercial sex was a source of public concern within the Jewish and Ukrainian communities of Galicia as well. This study focuses primarily on the evolving attitudes of the Galician Polish elite. On Jewish community activism to combat white slavery, see Bristow, Edward J., Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939 (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar; Pappenheim, Bertha and Rabinowitch, Sara, Zur Lage der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Galizien (Frankfurt, 1904), 47ffGoogle Scholar; and Glickman, Nora, “The Jewish White Slave Trade in Latin American Writings,” American Jewish Archives 34, no. 2 (1982): 178–89Google Scholar. Ukrainian sources focus less attention on white slavery until the post-World War I period. The most detailed discussion of young Ukrainian women recruited for service in Latin American bordellos is provided by playwright Myroslav Irchan, who learned of the process from letters of Ukrainian immigrants in Argentina while he was living in Canada. Irchan serialized the story of a woman whose father unknowingly turned her over to sexual captivity. “Iak tato don'ku prodav” [How a father sold a daughter], Ukrainske slovo [The Ukrainian word], 29 April to 17 June 1928. I am grateful to John-Paul Himka for this reference.

5 Quote from the motion introduced to the Austrian parliament by Professor Schlesinger on 11 November 1892 after the conclusion of the L'viv trial. The motion, signed by fourteen other deputies asked the prime minister “what … precautions [he] was taking to build an effective claim against the shameful outrages of the Jewish people in Austria?” Stenographisches Protokoll über die Sitzungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten des Österreichischen Reichsrats in den Jahren 1892 und 1893, IX Session, VII. Band (Vienna, 1893), 11 November 1892, 7638–39ff. Quoted in Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 80–81. See also, “Von Nah und Fern,” Arbeiter-Zeitung, 18 November 1892, 1, for a report of the same debate.

6 Austrian socialists discussed poverty as the basis of the sex trade in the columns of the Viennese Arbeiter-Zeitung. Polish socialists' analysis of the causes of prostitution can be accessed through the Warsaw journal, Głos [The voice], and the work of Dr.Rząśnicki, A., W sprawie prostytucji [The problem of prostitution] (Warsaw, 1911)Google Scholar and Prostytucja a proletarjat [Prostitution and the proletariat] (Warsaw, 1920). Feminist commentary on the sources and cures for prostitution appeared regularly in the columns of L'viv's Ster [The helm] and the Cracow journal, Nowe Słowe. On early Polish eugenicists, see Gawin, Magdalena, Rasa i nowocześnóść: Historia polskiego ruchu eugenicznego, 1880–1952 [Race and modernity: The history of the Polish eugenics movement, 1880–1952] (Warsaw, 2003), 12–67Google Scholar.

7 Legal penalties for procuring and for “corrupting girls under fourteen” were assigned according to the Austrian Penal Code of 27 May 1852. National Vigilance Association, Congress of the White Slave Traffic (London, 1899), 83–88; Papee, Jan, “O reformie prostytucy” [On the reform of prostitution], Lwowski Tygodnik lekarski [The L'viv medical weekly] 8 (1908): 3–5Google Scholar. On the registration system in Austrian Galica, see Bączkowski, Michał, “Prostytucja w Krakowie na przełomie XIX i XX w” [Prostitution in Cracow at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries], Studia historyczne [Historical studies] 43, no. 4 (2000): 593–607Google Scholar.

8 On the links between domestic prostitution in Eastern Europe and the export of women to foreign brothels, see Evans-Gordon, Major, The Alien Immigrant (London, 1903)Google Scholar; Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice; and Guy, Donna J., Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln, 1991)Google Scholar.

9 Coverage actually began a full year before the trial opened when the Warsaw newspaper, Słowo, printed details of the practices of the “white slavers.” “Handlarze kobiet,” Słowo, 31 July 1891, 4.

10 “Handlarze dziewcząt” [Traffickers in girls], Gazeta Narodowa [The national gazette], 21 October 1892, 2.

11 “W sprawie handlarzy dziewcząt” [On trafficking in girls], Gazeta Narodowa, 29 October 1892, 2. The relatively light sentences are in keeping with the penalties assigned in the 1852 Austrian penal code for procuring and for trafficking in minors.

12 “Z tajemnic społeczenstwa. Handlarz dziewcząt” [From society's secrets. A Trafficker in girls], Gazeta Narodowa, 9 July 1892, 2.

13 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 20 October 1892, 2; “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 22 October 1892, 2; ”Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 23 October 1892, 2.

14 “Z tajemnic” [Society's secrets], Gazeta Narodowa, 9 July 1892, 2.

15 Testimony of Róża Rosenreich, a “victim” probably of Jewish background in ibid.

16 Although contemporary sources often characterized Jewish women as comprising a disproportionate number of prostitutes in Galicia, local police records for Cracow and L'viv do not confirm this impression. Roughly 25 to 30 percent of the surnames on the Cracow registries for 1878 to 1911 are Jewish, and similar figures are reported for L'viv. For example, 76 out of a total of 392 prostitutes inscribed on the L'viv police registry in 1905, or about 24 percent, were Jews—approximately the same proportion of Jews to Christians in the town. Archiwum Państwowe Miasta Krakowa i Województwa Krakowskiego (State Archive for the City and District of Cracow), DPKr (Dyrekcja Policji w Krakowie—Director of Police in the Cracow District) 439–440. “Prostytucje we Lwowie” [Prostitution in L'viv], Part V, Swiat płciowy [Sexual world] 7 (1906): 31–33Google Scholar. Nonetheless, Jewish commentators expressed concern about the number of Jewish women resorting to prostitution. See for example, Pappenheim, and Rabinowitch, Zur Lage der jüdischen Bevölkerung, 47ff.

17 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 19 October 1892, 2.

18 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 22 October 1892, 2.

19 “Z tajemnic społeczeństwa. Handlarz dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 9 July 1892, 2.

20 Ibid.

21 “Handlarze kobiet,” Słowo, 31 July 1891, 4.

22 “Z tajemnic,” Gazeta Narodowa, 9 July 1892, 2.

23 Ryan, Michael, Philosophy of Marriage (London, 1839), 14Google Scholar, quoted in Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 35.

24 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 19 October 1892, 2.

25 On the migration of single women into Galician cities, see Zyblikiewicz, Lidia A., Kobieta w Krakowie w 1880r. Studium demograficzne [The woman in Cracow in 1880. A demographic study] (Cracow, 1999)Google Scholar; and Wood, Nathanial D., “Becoming Metropolitan: Cracow's Popular Press and Representation of Modern Urban Life, 1900–1915” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2004)Google Scholar.

26 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 19 October 1892, 2.

27 Ibid.

28 Testimony of Elka Jenner and Chana Herman, “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 20 October 1892, 2. Note that Jewish-sounding names predominate among the witnesses testifying against the accused Traffickers. While there is no evidence that the procurers used the time-honored practice of ritual marriage to enable them to travel abroad with their wares, the procurers may well have been acquainted with the witnesses before the decision was made to “export” them.

29 “Prostytucje w Lwowie,” Part IV, Swiat płciowy 7 (1906): 27–28Google Scholar.

30 Statistics reported in the L'viv journal, Swiat płciowy, for 1905 indicate that of the 392 prostitutes officially registered in L'viv in January of 1906, six were married and four of these “conducted this business with the full agreement of their husbands.” Of the 225 names officially removed from the registry the previous year, eight left the profession in order to get married and twelve left to take up “honest work.” “Prostytucje we Lwowie,” Part V, 32. Chistine Stansell discusses the incidence of “casual” or episodic prostitution as a means of supplementing meager wages in New York's growing city streets in City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (Urbana, 1982), 171–92Google Scholar.

31 Bilewski, Janusz, “Służące a prostytucya” [Servants and prostitution], Swiat płciowy 3 (1905): 33–39Google Scholar; ”Prostytucja we Lwowie,” Part V, 24–26.

32 See, for example, the work of Jozef Rolle, a medical doctor stationed in the Polish countryside in the 1860s. He wrote his observations in a series of articles in Przegląd lekarski Towarzystwa Nauk. Krakowskiego [The medical review of the Cracow Scientific Society] (1869), nrs. 38, 39, 40.

33 Rolle notes the importance of provincial garrison towns. Baczkowsksi discusses Cracow's significance as a concentrated center of soldiers and officers. Michał Baczkowski, “Prostytucja w Krakowie,” 596–97.

34 Of 105 registered sex workers surveyed, thirty-five responded that they engaged in prostitution because of pressure from their families and twenty-one claimed they turned to it out of a desire to save money for a dowry or other “legitimate” interest. These results challenged the generally held assumption that women were driven into the trade by “agitation on the part of procurers.” “Prostytucje we Lwowie,” Part IV, 27–28.

35 “Bagno wielkomiejskie” [The filth of the great city] Ilustrowany kuryer codzienny [The illustrated daily courier], 5 May 1911, 1–2.

36 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 19 October 1892, 2.

37 “Handlarze kobiet,” Słowo, 31 July 1891, 4.

38 “Handlarze dziwecząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, 20 October 1892, 2.

39 “Handlarze kobiet,” Słowo, 31 July 1891, 4.

40 Dr.Schrank, , Der Mädchenhandel, quoted in “Handel kobietami” [Traffic in women], Czystość 23 (1909): 354–56Google Scholar.

41 Posner, Nad otchłania, 22–23.

42 Wysłouch, Antoni, Prostytucja i jej skutki [Prostitution and its effects] (Poznań, 1905), 12–16Google Scholar.

43 Ibid.

44 See Gawin, Rasa i nowoczesnosc, for more on Czystość and other proto-eugenics organizations in the Polish lands.

45 Wysłouch's book was reviewed in Czystość 6 (1905): 76–79Google Scholar.

46 Czystość 6 (1905): 66Google Scholar; Czystość 9 (1905): 81–82Google Scholar.

47 Czystość, 13–14 (1905): 171–72.

48 “Handel kobietami,” Czystość 23 (1909): 356.