For his father: G. A. SHENDEROV.
VI. Testimony of Isaac Khaimovich Trotzky
Since Friday around four o'clock we had been hiding with our Russian landlady, but towards morning, being afraid, we all went into the cellar. There were 23 or 24 of us there, men, women, and children. All night long we remained there in peace. In the morning a servant came and said that they were going to search in the cellar, but that there was no reason for us to fear, since they were only searching for communists. A little while later four soldiers came and shouted: "Come out!" They had evidently been informed that we were hiding, for it is impossible to see from above what is going on in the cellar. We began to come out. My brother Benzion and his family went out first, then my nephew Zania Trotzky, after him Smylansky with his wife, daughter, and sister. Then Joseph Topoliansky with his wife and children, after him the barber Berman with his wife and child. The last were Volodarsky, myself, my wife and father. We had not had time to get upstairs when a shot rang out, we were enveloped in smoke, and the student Volodarsky, who went out ahead of us, rolled into the cellar. Then we did not go up, but hid in one of the apartments of the cellar, from which we heard the shooting. They killed all the men, after going over them all and after accepting ransom from them. After this one of the bandits came to the cellar and cried out: "Comrades, there must be Jews still in the cellar." His
CHERKASSY:
comrades responded to the cry and came down and began to search the cellar, lighting matches one after another. They went over two apartments, and came into the apartment where we sat, pressing close to one another — myself, my wife and father. One passed around the apartment with a match so close to me that it burned my face. "No one here." From nervous excitement we sat in the cellar more than an hour, motionless as stone. Then at last we heard the groans and cries of my nephew: "Uncle, help!" With difficulty we succeeded in finding a physician and took him to a hospital, where he died two days later.
ISAAC TROTZKY.
VII. Testimony of the Midwife Bela Moshenskaia
On Saturday, May 17, at half-past four A.M., the Moshensky family heard a knock on the front door. No one of the family answered the knock. After a few minutes they heard steps in the blind passage. About fifteen men rushed into the room, all armed with rifles and sabres, with cries of "Where are the men? Give us the men!" We answered: "There aren't any men." There were in the house old Moshensky, aged 72, his wife, two daughters and two small children. "Give us money." They were given all the money there was in cash, about five thousand. The bandits took the money and began to take away watches and to pick up articles of value. "Give us gold." The women swore that they had no gold, that they were poor people. "You lie, you Jew, you lie. Give us gold. Put him against the wall, against the wall." The old folks began to weep before them, to plead with them: "Dear friends, spare us, let us live, we have lived so many years, let us die in peace. Dear comrades, don't hurt us." In reply to this they struck the old woman on the head with a sabre, and she rolled over on the floor, bathed in blood; the old man they struck in the side with a sabre, and he fell on a chair dead. But this did not satisfy them. They rushed at the dead man and began to beat him up with gun-butts. "You lie, Jew, you are pretending." When the dead man's children began to wail, they rushed at them and began to beat them with gun-butts and sabres; by good luck none of them was seriously injured. The bandits took the things and departed. On the next day a bandit appeared. When he asked who lived there, he was told that the owner had been killed, his wife seriously wounded, and only one daughter was left. "Where is she then? Why is she hiding? Never mind,
UKRAINE
we'll kill them all, if not to-day then to-morrow, all to the very last."
Midwife B. MOSHENSKAIA.
VIII. Testimony of G. Krasnov