The entire number of persons who perished during the first period of the pogroms at the time of the Directory and the Batki amounts to at least 70,000.
We have no data on the number of persons who fell victims of the Denikin pogroms. The figure 167,000 given in the above mentioned memorandum which was handed to the Zionist Actions Committee and to Dr. Margoline is no doubt exaggerated. According to the statements of persons recently arrived from the Ukraine, the number of those killed in the second period of the pogroms is 50,000. If we assume that 120,000 deaths were due directly to the pogroms, we shall not be guilty of exaggeration. To these must be added the injured and wounded, those suffering from nervous and mental shock and the violated women. The pogroms swept the Ukraine like a hurricane, and it was impossible to undertake a census of such cases. The number, however, must be prodigious, running into the tens of thousands.
So also the number of victims who suffered material loss. It may be said that in all of the places which were visited by the pogroms the possessions of the Jews were completely destroyed. We have a typical report in this connection from the village of Orlovetz (Government of Kiev), which reads as follows: "The plunderers rushed at the Jewish houses.... Here they were helped by the whole Russian population. Everything was loaded on wagons and carried away. After they had completely emptied the houses and squeezed out in every possible way the last savings of the Jews they proceeded to destroy the houses and the shops. Shutters, window panes, doors were taken out, roofs were torn off, and so on. The greatest zeal was shown in searching for money. The floors were torn up, the soil was turned up again and again in the barns, cellars and yards, ovens were taken apart...." A similar report comes from Zlatopol, "The shops were plundered and then burned down (of 285 shops 275 were plundered and then burned down). Everything was taken away, from hatchets and wooden spoons to pianos. The poor water-carrier had his last blind nag taken away. Of 1,100 Jewish houses, 1,065 were destroyed. The goods and possessions were carried away on thousands of vehicles. The looting lasted two weeks." As the local physician, Dr. Isaacson, expressed himself, 'The pogrom stopped of itself, since everything was looted and all the inhabitants had fled to Mirgorod." * The Jewish population of the villages and hamlets visited by the pogroms left everything behind as it was, and fled without further thought to a larger place. The roads were covered with the bodies of old men, women and children, and in the larger places the same horrible death awaited the fugitives.... The economic situation of the Jews in the large Government cities of the Ukraine is desperate. The authorized agent of the Relief Committee of the Red Cross reports from Yelisavetgrad, "There is need of assistance in every shape and form. If Yelisavetgrad should not get any support, the entire population will die. This is no exaggeration. The people have not a shirt to change and there is no possi-
*See Appendix, pp. 288 ff.
UKRAINE
bility of getting any. If no help should come the outbreak of disease is unavoidable. Food exists only in very small quantities. The peasants do not come to market as they have nothing to buy. Articles of food are not coming in and hunger is approaching." Another agent reports, "More than a thousand inhabitants of Ladyzhenka are to this day living in Golovanevsk. Ragged and barefoot, with a completely decayed shirt on the body or without any shirt, healthy and contagiously diseased men and women are squatting in the synagogues, in empty barns or simply in the streets. God alone, or the livid and tightly closed lips of these people, can tell you how they live and pass the day. One sees many biers in the crooked streets of Golovanevsk, and many collections are made to secure shrouds for the Jews of Ladyzhenka...."
According to existing data, 150,000 men suffered material loss in August, 1919, in the Government of Kiev. And there is no doubt that In the Governments of Podolia, Volhynia and Kherson, the damage was not less. It would not therefore be an exaggeration to say that in the Governments of Kiev, Volhynia and Podolia about 600,000 persons suffered material loss. This was the calculation of the Relief Committee of the Red Cross for the time up to the coming of the Denikin pogroms. We may assume that not less than half a million were affected materially by the latter, and, therefore, that the entire number affected was over a million.
If we add about 50,000 or 60,000 orphans we get a complete picture of the destruction of Jewish life in the Ukraine. The pogroms in the Ukraine in the year 1919 form one of the most tragic episodes in the dark history of the much-suffering Jewish people.