The Pokalev peasants again took command of the city. First of all they went to the prison, where were the land-owners and foresters whom they had previously arrested, and slaughtered them all. Then they fell upon several land-owners living in the city, and wounded them badly,' and likewise severely wounded the wife of a forester who was under arrest, and her sister, who was visiting her, and the latter's child.
Second Attack of Kozyr-Zyrka
On December 31 Kozyr-Zyrka again approached Ovruch with heavy reinforcements and began to fire on the town with heavy guns. The Pokalevites replied to them for the course of an hour, but then were silenced. Kozyr-Zyrka continued to fire on the town, and finally his bands burst into the city, where a bloody bacchanalia began.
Pogrom in the Villages Potapovichi and Geshovo.
By way of preface it must be observed that on the way to Ovruch near the village Potapovichi the road was found torn up. Someone said to the Cossacks that the Jews had done this.
UKRAINE
Then the Cossacks decided to settle with the Jews of the near-by villages.
In Potapovichi there were only four Jewish families, and the Cossacks, entering the village, began to rob and murder them and violate the women. In one house the owner was away; his three daughters and son-in-law were there. On the person of one of the daughters was hidden about a hundred rubles. The Cossacks took this and other money, and likewise every piece of valuable property. They violated the women, and since the latter, especially the two girls, resisted, they beat them until their faces were turned into masses of blood. The son-in-law, who had just returned from war-captivity, was taken out in the yard, where another Jew was found. They shot both of them, killing the son-in-law outright, while the other Jew was only wounded, but pretended to be dead, and so saved himself. From this house they went to a Jewish blacksmith, who had just returned from the front. They sent two bullets into him, and were preparing to shoot a Russian boy servant of his, who was in hysterics. The mortally wounded blacksmith gathered his strength together and cried: "Why are you killing him? He is Russian." The Cossacks made sure the boy really was Russian, and left him in peace. But since the blacksmith, by interceding for him, had shown that he was still alive, they finished him off. After this they went out into the yard, where they met an old man, the blacksmith's father-in-law, and killed him, as well as a boy, the blacksmith's nephew.
From Potapovichi they went to the village of Geshovo, to hunt for Jews there. In this village lived a number of Jews, but they all had time to flee; only one deaf old melamed (teacher) remained. The Cossacks took him along with them and set out in the direction of Ovruch. On the way they met an old shokhet returning to his home. They seized him, too, and on the spot hung both old men on a high tree, one by a telegraph-wire, the other by a strap. The latter, the peasants say, fell down several times, but each time they hung him up again. Then they took them down from the high tree and hung them on a small tree, to which they affixed a placard saying that "Whoever takes them down has not more than two minutes to live." In consequence of this the peasants would not let them be taken down. And only when the bodies began to decay did the Jews succeed in taking them down and burying them in a nearby place.
In all nine Jews were killed in Potapovichi and Geshovo.
(Testimony of Glossman, pp. 33-35.) Such was the prelude to what afterwards took place in Ovruch.
OVRUCH:
Murders, Violations and Robberies
Having entered Ovruch after midday, December thirty-first, the Cossacks scattered over the city and began to rob and murder the Jews. One detachment went to the market-place and there seized about ten Jewish girls, whom the Cossacks dragged into the Feitelson inn, where the girls were exposed to indescribable persecutions and violence.
Other Cossacks at this time were killing every Jew they met. One Jew whom they attacked took refuge in a near-by house. The Cossacks went into a house, where they thought he was hiding, and found a father and three sons sitting at table. They led all four out into the yard and shot them one after another. They came to the house of the lawyer Glossman, an educated man, a member of the commune. They took him and his old father out in the street, then decided to free the old man and told him to go. But he refused to abandon his son, and the Cossacks began to beat the old man with whips, in the course of which they struck out his only eye (he had long lost his other eye); and they shot the younger Glossman on the spot. The Ataman Kozyr-Zyrka was present on horseback at this shooting.