Editor's Note: At the time this decree was enacted, each Jewish community had to supply a certain quota of recruits for conscription. The last portion of the decree required that the community supply an additional third of their quota if a member of the community mutilated himself. For example, if the normal quota was 9 recruits, the community would have to supply 9+3=12 recruits instead.
On Jewish Communities' military service obligations in case of Jewish self-mutilation.
The Legal Department of the State Council, meeting in general assembly to consider the Interior Minister's presentation on Jewish Communities' military service obligations in case of Jewish self-mutilation, and also for its part, to recognize a proposal on the same subject from the honorable Vilna Military Governor, and Grodno, Minsk and Byelostok Governor-Generals reached this opinion: it is affirmed, statute 85 of the regulations on Jewish recruitment obligations (Legal Code Vol. 4) is substituted with the following: "If anyone in a Jewish family causes himself injury in order to avoid military service, then he must in any case serve as a recruit ignoring his injury; additionally, the same family, having made him incapable for service, and as punishment for not preventing his self-mutilation, must provide another able recruit at the direction of the authorities, preferably younger, and both of these recruits will count as one; the same community to which the family of the self-mutilated belongs, must send, on top of their able recruits, an additional third, because of the self-mutilation."
Resolved. It is final (V.P.S.Z. Vol. XII, No. 10,308)
