Those who remained thought that the presence of the corpses would frighten off the peasants and save them from further torments. In reality it was still worse. Every new band, on seeing the corpses, became convinced that here the Jews had defended themselves with weapons in their hands, and demanded of the living that they give up their weapons, and stood them up against the wall with the vilest abuse. All day long we kept ransoming ourselves with money.
(Signature)
ALEXANDROVKA-FUNDUKEIEVKA ( F KIEV) Pogrom of May 18-20, 1919
Report on the Pogrom and Bloody Massacre Which Took Place in the Town of Alexandrovka, Government of Kiev
(Station of Fundukeievka)
The pogrom and the murders began May 18. A squadron of Ataman Grigoriev's detachment stopped at the station of Fundukeievka. A group of fifteen or twenty armed men went to the town "to look for communists." The bold procedure of Comrade Vnikhrist at the station, and of Comrade K. Zhadon, who met them on the bridge with a white flag in his hand, so as to avert a disaster, were of no avail; both nearly paid with their lives. According to the words of several eyewitnesses, the Grigorievists were guided by one of the local intellectuals. Comrade Zhadon can confirm this statement.
They began the devastation with the first houses, in regular order. Immediately behind them trailed bands of local pillagers. Almost nothing was left in the dwellings. With the first shots all the population of the outskirts rushed in a panic into the center of town. From some dwellings they did not have time to flee, and fell victims of the bandits in their own homes, five in one family, two in another; two were killed on the street. The dead proved to be exclusively people who had been sick. With that day began a continuous series of looting, devastation, and barbarous murders. The authorities did nothing. On the night of the 15th they plundered several homes and killed one man; he recognized the robbers and called one by name. Heartrending cries for help were heard, but there was no source from which help could be expected. The population was terror-stricken; most of them had given up living in their homes, abandoning everything to fate.
ALEXANDROVKA— FUNDUKEIEVKA 307
The fatal days for the Jewish population of the town were the 19th and 20th of May. On May 18 one of the assistants of Grigoriev by telephone from Tzybuliev warned the commander of the local detachment, Comrade Shostnik, that he was sending a cavalry detachment with the object of rooting out the communists. Though Comrade Shostnik says he assured him that there were no communists in the town, it had no effect on "the protector of the Soviet power without communes." At eleven o'clock on the 19th, after a short bombardment with cannon and machine guns, the first horsemen appeared and began to fire at close range, "to take them at sight," as they expressed it. There were heard cries, shrieks, groans of the wounded and dying, mingled with fierce commands of "Give us money," the sound of broken glass, and the crash of shattered doors and shutters. They robbed and murdered without mercy. The number of the murderers increased all the time; other local robbers appeared again, at whose hands more fell than at the Grigorievists'.
They hunted the people out and killed them in orchards, gardens, houses, garrets, cellars, rubbish-pits; they killed old men, middle-aged, and young women, and babes at the breast. No mercy was shown anywhere to anyone. The Russian intellectuals were passive at the very best, allowing no one to hide in their houses, with very rare exceptions. There appeared a band of bag-carriers, mostly of the town and the neighboring villages, who cleaned out the dwellings, not disdaining anything, even little pots.
On the night of the 20th, exclusively local thieves plundered and killed— in one home eight people, next door to the building of the Executive Committee of the volost (district); in another, in the outskirts, thirteen or fourteen people. Life in the town stopped; living corpses moved about; all the houses were broken open, with smashed doors, and shutters torn off, and windows broken. Inside the homes was the most frightful chaos. Furniture was everywhere upset, and broken up, all papers were strewn about on the floor. In some places, where the pillows and feather-beds had not been stolen, the pillow-slips had been taken off and the feathers scattered about; and on the following days even these wretched relics were carried off in bags. Exactly the same scene of murder and destruction was repeated on May 31, again by the Grigorievists with the energetic participation of local people. In these two days alone there were more than 160 victims. After the 21st murders stopped, since Soviet forces arrived; but the visiting of houses continued, for
UKRAINE