THE insane tragedy which we are considering from the historical and political standpoint in order to lay bare its roots and place the guilt, is so horrible that human speech is too poor in words to describe the infinite despair and hopelessness and the various phases of human misery which the Jews in the Ukraine have suffered. One single episode, the massacre in Novo- Mirgorod, is a symbol of the entire tragedy, a living expression of the frightful events.
The bandits entered the town, armed and equipped for robbery, murder and rape. The Jews of the place in mortal anxiety had concealed themselves with their wives and children in the lofts and the cellars of the houses, in dumb despair and helplessness, and very likely also doubting the goodness of the All-high who allows such frightfulness to happen. The bandits made their preparations. A grave was dug in the Jewish cemetery. Lime was secured for those who, dreaming of life and love, expected a miracle. But no miracle happened. The murderers went from house to house, raping, beating and killing. They were followed by vehicles, on which were placed those who had not yet succumbed to their wounds. When loaded full, the vehicles were taken to the cemetery, where the living and the dead were thrown in without delay. The
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graves were covered with lime so that when they were opened many bodies were no longer recognizable.
The episode in Novo-Mirgorod contains the tragedy of all Ukrainian Jewry, who live scattered thinly in many towns and villages of beautiful Ukraine. Novo-Mirgorod is a symbol. Everywhere the Jews felt the sword of Damocles of armed bands/freebooters, regular troops, Batki, and so on, and they saw the inevitableness of their fate and the certainty of their destruction. In despair the Jews looked for a way out. But there was none. Wherever they went they were overtaken by their fate and met a horrible death. In Cherkassy the city was fired on from without, while inside a band of murderers and plunderers went from house to house and killed all Jews. "The city was under fire continually. The shells exploded over the houses and only during the night the cannonading stopped for a few hours. The Jews, seeking safety from the shells and the bandits, fled from loft to cellar and from cellar to loft. Even now when I close my eyes I see these people, men, women, children, insane with terror, like a frightened herd of sheep, running now here, now there, not knowing where they should go or where it would be better for them. Just now they have gone up to the loft and think they are safe there. The cannonading begins. It is so horrible there: they can hear the whizzing of the shells distinctly. So they flee to the sticky, dark and damp cellars. There it is really gruesome. The crying and weeping of the children confuses their understanding. The shooting stops. All stream out of the cellars into the yard and from there again to the loft. And so it goes during the five long, long days and nights.... and then... then you see dead bodies lying every-
^ where in the streets, horribly disfigured bodies, lakes of blood.... And then you see again the mass graves opened, and the people trying to identify their friends and relatives by their buttons, by their monograms, for the bodies are unrecognizable...... You see the burial of the dead.... You hear sobbing,
the long uninterrupted sobbing of an entire city." *
In Rotmistrovka the entire Jewish population was driven into the synagogue, where 1,200 persons, men, women and children, huddled together in a heap, spent, without food and drink, endless hours of anxiety in fear of their lives. The bandits had a bomb ready to blow up the house of prayer. Only by a miracle did they at the last moment succeed in averting the disaster and buying their freedom.!
The pogrom held full sway in Uman. (Whole families were put to death, horribly tortured and slaughtered. Women were violated. All this was going on often in one half of the house, while in the other half inhabited by Christians, the inmates remained quiet and undisturbed, having pasted crosses on the walls and placed crucifixes in the windows.
The pogrom finally came to an end, and by order of the Ataman Klimenko, the leader of the insurrectionists, the freebooters drove the Jews together and told them to gather the bodies of the murdered in the houses and streets and load them on the wagons. They were taken to the Jewish cemetery and buried in three gigantic graves. The Jews were not allowed to dig individual graves, all had to be quickly thrown into the mass graves. While the Jews, thus collected,
*See Appendix, pp. 248 ff.
f See testimony of the authorized investigator, I. G. Tzifrinovich, in Appendix, pp. 300 ff.
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