One boy who resisted was placed on a bench every morning and given at least one hundred strokes of a birch leaving him bleeding and reeling in agony. After each birching, he was sent to the infirmary where he was treated and then soon beaten again. He absorbed the abuse, did not cry out and did not relent.
Even after their forced conversion to Christianity, Itzkovich and his fellow Cantonists suffered from continued abuse. A converted Jew in an argument with a Christian comrade would still hear the epithet, ‘parkhatyy Yevri!’ (disgusting Jew). Sometimes their abusers would add, ‘A Jew who has been baptized is like a wolf that has been fed.’
These insults served a good purpose for Itzkovich. By continually reminding him of his Jewish identity, they strengthened his inner resolve to remain a Jew. He pledged to himself that he would seek justice and, without allowing fear of the penalties to dissuade him, would win back the right to live as a Jew.
Every year in May, the order came from St. Petersburg to send the Cantonists who had turned eighteen to join the regular field troops. In 1854, the boys who’d reached age eighteen, including those from Itzkovich’s detachment, were dispatched to St. Petersburg and once there assigned to various units.
Itzkovich’s detachment participated in an imperial review in the presence of the Tsar, during the course of which many of the Cantonists complained about their forced conversion to Christianity. That took immense courage, as it put their lives at risk. As a result, the entire unit was placed under arrest, and they were all sentenced to the harsh punishment of running a gauntlet past three thousand men.
They would all have been beaten to death had the sentence been carried out, but it was suspended after the death of Nicholas I on February 19, 1855. Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II, canceled the punishment for the entire detachment, and only those of the Cantonists who had complained were assigned to garrison battalions in Siberia.
Soon afterward, Colonel Dyakonov died suddenly. Dyakonov’s burial during a hard December frost kept the boys outside for over two hours, but it was a joyous holiday nonetheless.
The manifesto of Tsar Alexander II on August 26, 1856, forbade the taking of underage Jewish children to be Cantonists, and it was soon ordered that all the boys in Cantonist battalions be released and returned to their original status. Jewish converts, however, were not eligible for return to their previous status as Jews. The directive that concerned them ordered that the older Cantonists who had reached the age of eighteen were to be assigned to serve in the regular forces, while the younger ones were enrolled in the War Department academies.
Meanwhile, life had changed for the better after Dyakonov’s death. The food improved and the brutal beatings stopped. The members of the company, by now adults, were dispatched to central Russia for assignment to troop units. The Second Company of younger boys was assigned to the academy.
Israel Itzkovich had become a Cantonist in 1853. He continually attempted to restore his official status as a Jew. Finally, in 1872, he was released on indefinite leave.
At this point Itzkovich was motivated by two wishes. One was to be granted retirement status and the benefits that entailed. The other was to change his official listing back from Christian to Jew.
Itzkovich reported to the authorities that he was a soldier on indefinite leave and he requested retirement status. Informed that to receive this status he would either have to serve another ten months or maintain his status of indefinite leave for an additional three years, he chose the former and enlisted in the Tomsk Province for the purpose of serving out his remaining time.
