struck a bargain at 1,800 rubles. Things became peaceful. On March 23 firing began; a bolshevist detachment began to attack the Strukists from Oster. The Jews left the village and hid themselves as best they could in the vicinity. The Strukists won, and again became the only government in the whole region. Three days later the Jews returned to the hamlet. Their houses had been completely plundered. In my own house the windows and doors were smashed, and all the furnishings had vanished. I learned that the Strukists had only made a beginning at this; all the goods had been seized by the local peasants. I began to demand insistently that the peasants return the plunder to me. This helped. The peasants got frightened (on this day there were no Strukists in the village), and began, little by little, to bring my goods back to me. I was told that my neighbor had taken my feather-bed and cushions. I went to ask him to return my bed to me. He fell on me like a wild beast; how did I dare to demand of him, the head man of the village? He would arrest me and hand me over to the Strukists as a communist. I saw that some change had taken place in my neighbor. He had previously been peaceable, and extraordinarily conscientious, and had always been kind with me. I understood that I could not stay any longer in the village. I had to get away to save my life. I left the house, and slowly, as if taking a stroll, so that they should not notice my plans, began to go out of the village. On the way I kept chatting and joking with the peasants. I felt by the behavior of the peasants that something was due to happen to me there. For a minute I entered a peasant's hut. In a couple of minutes the head man ran after me with a gun in his hand: "Aha, you're here! I'll shoot you right here at once. You want to give us the slip." I managed to appease the head man with words, and got him pacified. He went away and told me to wait for the overseers (desiatniki), for whom he had sent. I again sneaked out of the hut without being noticed, and, slinking along over fences and through fields, going in up to my neck in water, got to the river, and from there got across in a boat to Oster. As I learned, the Strukists came to the village on the next day. They took the entire Jewish population of the place, young and old, out beyond the village into the fields. They demanded money. Whoever had money with him bought himself off, received blows to boot, and was undressed (they undressed them all and left them in nothing but underclothes). My father, a 75-year-old man, had no money with him and was killed on the spot, before the eyes of the other Jews. Now there is no one
ORONY:
left of the Jews. The peasants are quite friendly to us when we visit them.
SIMON-LEIB RABINOVICH.
F ORONY ( F KIEV) Testimony of Vasia Makovskaia
Our village furnished many Strukists. There had never been any friction between the Jews and the peasants. The Jews had been living there a long time and were on good terms with the peasants. When the Struk gangs appeared in our region, the attitude to the Jews changed in our village. The Strukists from the village and their comrades came there on every convenient occasion. They brought with them malice and hatred for the Jews. The peasants' attitude to the Jews became worse and more hostile from day to day. They began to discover that the Jews were in the way there, and disturbed the freedom of life. Every time when the Strukists came into the village the peasants told them what could be demanded of each of the Jews. Often they would send the Strukists into Jewish stores or homes to seize something that suited their own, the peasants', needs. In a short time there had disappeared from the Jews' houses much property, clothing, and money. I won't go over in detail all that happened among us at this time, how they stole all our money, took our shoes and clothing off from us, how they beat us and threatened us with death. All this is nothing in comparison with what happened to us afterwards.