But no one had time to look around before another gang arrived, and seized whatever anyone had left. Then the entire population was driven into a prayer-house, where 1,200 people, men, women, and children, jammed into a single heap, lived through endless hours of mortal terror. There was a moment when they actually had bombs in their hands to blow up the prayer-house, and it was only by a miracle that the Jews succeeded in saving themselves with a ransom. No small amount of mortal terror did the population live through, and for the space of eight days after this no one ventured to go out of the yard where the prayer-house was (it belonged to a well-known Rabbi of Rotmistrovka). If anyone, owing to want and hunger, did venture to go out into the village to get anything, he went with uncertain footsteps, trembling every minute. Several days later, in fact, after the pogrom, when a boy of sixteen, Brunstein, went out to look for his family, who had hidden, he was wounded. And when the local peasants, thinking him dead, told the family so that they might come and get him, no one dared to go. Later when his brother ran to him, the peasants, seeing that he was still alive, shot him to death. For several days the dead and wounded lay about before the Jews made up their minds to collect them under the protection of a local militiaman. Almost all the slain were stripped naked; some, according to what eyewitnesses say, were stripped on the second and third day after they had been murdered, by local peasants, who went around looking to see if anything had been left.
The following fact is also worthy of note. In one house a father and son were shot. The father was afterwards hung, and all this was done before the eyes of the wife and mother. The mother implored them to kill her, too, but they would not, and when she began to scream, they drove her from the house. In one house, after taking every thing out of the house, the bandits stood up the entire family, which consisted of four persons (the father of 65 years, mother of the same age, a son of 30 and daughter of 28), stood them up to be shot, beginning with the daughter, as revenge on the parents. The son out of fright fell down beside his sister, and they thought he was dead. Later, when he went out of the house, he saw the bandits coming to make sure that he was dead, because they remembered that they had fired only at the father, mother and sister. A third fact worthy of attention is this. A woman (the wife of the local Rabbi) ran out of the city with her children. On the way she was wounded in the leg. Her son, aged 14, seeing that her blood was flowing, asked some passing peasants to help her. One of them volunteered to take her to a neighboring village, and going up to her ran her through with a pike. Her children, a boy of 14 and an infant of five, he wounded with the pike. Many such facts might be enumerated. There are two others which are worthy of being recorded. A mother and several children, trying to hide, remained in a forest. Hearing firing, the mother, fearing that they would be discovered because of the cries of her two-months-old baby, strangled him with her own hands. An old mother with her daughter and five children (the oldest twelve and the youngest half a year) were running away to hide. On the road all were killed. (The children of three years and a year and a half had their heads crushed.) The youngest infant, of half a year, they left there. The next day he died of hunger.
TOWN OF SMELA ( F KIEV)
Pogrom of May 14-15, 1919 I. Testimony of Moishe Sumsky, Merchant, 52 Years Old
I and several other Jews hid in a Russian's garret. Several armed men came in and asked whether there weren't Jews there. That moment a baby began to cry in the garret, and this gave us away. A fearful scene began. Wild cries resounded: "Come here, comrades, here is where the Jew-communists are hiding. Come down! To the wall!" We were searched, and everything we had taken from us. It was awful. The women and children raised the most terrible cries. They drew us up to shoot us, and our Russian protector with us. With great difficulty we succeeded in saving our lives. They left the Russian householder alone only because he was not the owner of the house.
(Signature)
II. Testimony of Hannah Pavletssky, 38 Years Old, Merchant
On Sunday, May 18, after all the ways of leaving the city had been cut off (the soldiers met those who tried to leave with pointed rifles), we crept through the fence to a Russian neighbor's garret. Besides our family there were about 15 other people there — men, women and children. About 9 A.M. we heard noises and the cry: "Haven't you some Jews here?" We
UKRAINE