The Directory penetrated to Novo-Mirgorod in January, 1919. The Soviet regime replaced it approximately in April. Under the Directory a mobilization (draft) was declared, but the Jews did not answer the summons. Among the Hebrew youth there were rather many communists.
A verst from Mirgorod is Zlatopol, in the neighboring government of Kiev. There pogroms began as early as May 6, starting from local gangs; but on May 10 or 11 the Grigorievists arrived there. The number of Jewish families was as many as 1,100. Sixty Jews were killed and very many wounded. Under the influence of this the local peasants tried to start plundering, but the volost (district), that is, the Executive Committee, stopped the looting. But when the Grigorievist detachments arrived, May 17, they perpetrated a savage pogrom, ac-
NOVO-MIRGOROD:
companied by murders and pillaging. Murders were fixed in advance as the main object, since graves for the expected corpses were dug in good season the day before in the Jewish cemetery, and lime was prepared for disinfection. More than a hundred people were killed. The local priest vainly went with a procession of the cross to the robbers, entreating them not to kill or rob. The number of the slain would have been incomparably higher, but the Executive Committee of the volost purposely arrested an enormous number of Jews with their families (up to 1,300 souls), and "kept them for eight days in a house of detention, supplying them with food. This saved them from massacre. But their dwellings were stripped bare during this time by robbers, the doors broken in, and the windows smashed. There were no burnings, nor violations (of women). About May 22 a Soviet detachment under the command of Zhivoder arrived. The Grigorievists disappeared.
To the Head Mission of the Russian Red Cross Society in Ukraine
Note of Report from the Representatives of the Committee of
Aid to the Pogrom-Sufferers in the City of Novo-Mirgorod, Government of Kherson: S. Schwarz and
F. Reznichenko
On May 17 the Jewish community of our city suffered an extremely severe pogrom, which caused the death of over a hundred victims and the complete economic ruin of the city. Out of three hundred Jewish families, one or two escaped during the outbreak. Everything was taken— wares, money, valuables, and stores of provisions. The pogrom itself had an exceptionally savage character. On the day before the pogrom, graves were dug in the Jewish cemetery; lime was prepared; carts followed the murderers, upon which were loaded the bodies of the wounded before they were actually dead. As soon as a cart was full it started for the cemetery, where immediately both dead and living were buried. Lime was strewn in the graves, so that it was impossible to recognize many corpses when the graves were opened.
The consequences of the pogrom are frightful. About two hundred orphans are deprived of any sort of aid. There are sixty wounded, a part of whom are lying in a hospital which will have to close for lack of means. The rest of the population is starving. The peasants until very recently have scarcely been selling provisions to the Jews. We are getting aid from nowhere, since Novoukrainka, the only city that has helped us,
UKRAINE
is at present cut off from Novo-Mirgorod. The local regime is not affording help to the suffering population. The committee of aid which has been formed is also unable to relieve the condition of the starving, on account of the absence of means. In the meantime the condition of the sufferers becomes worse with every day. There is nothing to bind up the wounded with, there is no one to look after the orphans, there is nothing for the healthy to eat. Help is needed at once, and on an extensive scale. (Signature)
ALEXANDRIA ( F KHERSON) SECOND GRIGORDEVIST POGROM OF JUNE 24, 1919
Testimony of Nukhim Levin, Member of the Alexandria Militia Troop. July 8, 1919
After the first pogrom, perpetrated by Grigoriev on May 20, there was formed in Alexandria a workers' military troop at the Central Bureau of the trade unions, which was entered by 30 "military" members and 300 who had learned to shoot. The troop consisted almost exclusively of Jews, since Russians did not enter it. The Jews, however, entered it freely. In the synagogues it was proclaimed as the duty of every Jew to enter the troop, which thus represented the Jewish self-defense at the Central Bureau. There were close to 300 rifles.
On Friday, May 9, two weeks before the second pogrom, the 12th Moscow sharpshooters regiment burnt Grigoriev's own house beyond the embankment. Grigoriev is a native of the place. The burning was done by incendiary bombs to the sounds of the Internationale. The military troop took no part whatever in this act. Nevertheless provocatory rumors had it that Jews had burnt Grigoriev's house.