In the forties of the eighteenth century, the "leader and great Hetman of the Gaidamak troops/' Wasski Washchilo, shows clearly in his proclamation that the purpose of the rebellion was to destroy the Jewish people for the protection of Christianity. "Guided by zeal for the holy Christian religion, and anxious that the anger of the Lord for all these crimes may not fall upon innocent persons, I have decided, so far as it lies in my power, together with other good people who love Christianity, to exterminate the accursed Jewish people. I have already with God's help killed the Jews in the communities of Krichev and Propoisk, and although the Jews succeeded in having government troops sent against me, the just God gave me his protection in all cases. Trusting in the grace of God, I shall bring to end this holy war against the traitors." ^ The year 1767 in which the insurrection under Zhelezniak and Gonta took place was pregnant with fate for the Jews. A terrible massacre of the Jews took place at Uman. There were also excesses against the Jews in Fastov, Granov, Zhivotov, Tulchin and Dashev.
According to the reports of eye witnesses, 50,000 to 60,000 Jews lost their lives at the time of the Gaidamaks.*
A hundred and fifty years had passed since then.
*The data of the pogroms under Khmelnitzky and the Gaidamaks are taken from the 1st volume of "History of the Jews in Russia," Moscow, 1914.
The Ukrainian village became quiet again and found its equilibrium. It cost the Jews in Ukrainia much toil and labor to re-establish their economic existence. Now as before the village population dealt principally with the Jewish merchant and middleman, coming very rarely in contact with the poor Jewish population, the manual laborers. In the mind of the village people the Jew still occupied an intermediate place, "between the working people on the one hand and the landlords and rich cities on the other," being essentially nearer to the latter than to the former. The historical I antipathy to the Jew remained, but there was no hatred. The Jew was merely distrusted as a stranger and the Ukrainian villagers, blessed with the craftiness of the peasant, showed contempt for the Jewish middleman and inhabitant of the city. Nevertheless peaceful and neighborly relations developed between the Jew and the Ukrainian peasants, which suffered no change during the last four decades of Russian rule. Jews who lost their entire possessions and most of their relatives in the fearful storms of 1919, testify unanimously that in a great number of cities and districts, peaceful and neighborly relations had existed between the Ukrainian peasants and the Jews, and in some cases they were very friendly to one another.
These neighborly relations were somewhat disturbed during the German occupation. The well-being of the population both Christian and Jewish had increased considerably. It was the time of unlimited speculation in goofis and money, of smuggling in and out of Soviet Russia and the neutral zone. The peasants, however, could not increase their earnings in the same measure as the others. The products of the land were take