The bestial crowd soon found that it was not easy to destroy so many people by shooting through the windows. They went inside and threw bombs and hand grenades into the mass of people crazed with i; UKRAINE
terror and threatening to choke and kill each other. A bloody dance of death began. Knives flashed, axes whizzed, special weapons were improvised for the occasion, pickaxes and boot heels were employed. A river of blood was formed with the victims swimming in it. There were tortures and abuses such as the world never knew. Dead and halfdead bodies were desecrated, red bows dipped in their blood were fastened to their breasts with the words, "There you have your commune!" Here Beerman and his two daughters were killed in the most bestial manner, as the latter fell on their father's neck and begged to be allowed to die with him. Mogilev, the father, died too, and his daughters made the same request as the others. Deutschman, too, perished there with his four sons, of whom the oldest was 28, the youngest 15. Here all the five brothers Kaphun lost their lives, their father having been murdered by bandits the year before. Here a martyr's death came to a father with three sons of ten, twelve and thirteen years respectively; to two fathers and their only sons; here two octogenarians met their end, and here Bossakovsky died in the arms of his wife (who by a miracle found her way out of this hell) at the hands of Kossubsky. Look at the building of the Commissariat or ask this living witness — they will tell you a frightful history, the meaning of which is not clear to all, but which sounds in our ears like a sentence of death.
Thus in the course of five hours, from five o'clock until ten in the evening, several hundred human lives were extinguished.
When the bloody work was over, some of the robbers hurried to bring vehicles to carry away the bodies of the tortured victims to the reservoirs where the sugar factory drains off the water during its operation. There, a verst from the town, a ditch had been prepared, like the graves at the front, where the mutilated mass of human beings was thrown in.
Another gang of bandits fell upon the terror-stricken population, began to drag out of the houses those who had been left unharmed during the day, as for example sick persons suffering from typhus, convalescents, etc., and killed them before the eyes of their relatives, violated girls and robbed and plundered until suddenly there appeared a body of defense which had been formed and organized by the criminal leaders themselves when they became aware of the enormities they had committed and were frightened of their own deeds.
What happened in the town the first morning when it became known that all the persons collected in the Commissariat had been killed cannot be reported — weeping, sobbing, wailing, hysterical cries, madness, fainting and death from heart failure. All wept, the heaven and the angels, the disinterested stars and the unhappy human beings — a sea of tears and endless despair. Ruined widows and orphaned children sent threatening curses against the whole world, threw themselves in measureless grief on the ground and begged God for death.
The executioners who organized themselves as a defense in the morning did not even leave the victims to their sorrow, but chased them back into the houses every moment. The houses were no longer occupied by single families, but by several, which consisted only of women and children. The remaining houses were left to the mob and the women of the village, who carried away the last remnants of value "under the oversight of the defense." No one asked for food or help.(
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The children died quietly on the breasts of their halfdead mothers. Now and then you could hear the noise in the uninhabited houses where the village women and the mob were carrying on. On the I7th of May Soviet troops appeared, who chased away all the bandits and drove them into the woods. The seemingly dead place woke up and the people crept out of their holes. There was terrible hunger. The troops shared their rations with the people. When the Soviet troops left, the town was again transformed into a cemetery. Two monuments of sorrow remained in the unhappy town, the blood-stained building of the Commissariat and the silent grave in, which the remains of about 400 innocent victims found their rest.
B. SANDLER.
President of the temporary Soviet of the Town of Trostianetz. i
CHAPTER V
THE results of the sad events cannot be expressed in exact numbers, especially at a time when the civil war is still going on, and there is no connection between different parts of the Ukraine, which are occupied by various powers fighting each other. The internal front of the Batki has divided the Ukraine into a number of unconnected parts.*