All the bodies were found naked or half naked. On Great Fountain Street in the Poliak house there was a case where the bandits killed the husband and father of a woman who tried to shield them with her own body. She herself was thereby wounded in the breast with a bullet. This woman was pregnant and on the next day brought forth a child, while on the floor of the dwelling lay the bodies of three slain, including her husband and father. A certain number of cases of violations of women were recorded, of which exact information cannot be given. A large number of cases are reported where in one half of a house, inhabited by Jews, havoc and murder reigned, while the inhabitants of the other half, Christians, continued to live peacefully, after hanging crosses on their walls and placing saints' images in the windows. (Appendix 8.) At the same time, in the opinion of most of the victimized Jews, it was sometimes enough that a Christian should merely give assurance that he knew the Jews in question to be decent and honorable people, and the bandits would not harm anyone. A number of cases are recorded in which conscientious Christians concealed Jews in their homes or interceded for them, and thereby saved them from ruin and death. On the Torgovaya Street a Christian Fofitzer, saved a whole street by his interference; while in other cases officials and "intellectuals" looked with perfect unconcern upon scenes of destruction and murder of Jews living next door to them, and made no attempts whatever to intervene or speak so much as a word in defense. On the contrary, in some cases there were exhibitions of malicious joy, of closing the doors upon people entreating protection (Appendix 10) or of direct incitement against their Jewish neighbors (Appendix 11). Out of a number of cases of complete moral depravity it is worth while to quote the following, which are completely verified:
Beyond Krasny Krest, in the fields, five Jews were shot, one of whom, an old man with white beard, was not killed at once, but
UMAN:
lay a long time in acute agony. This attracted the attention of the Christian children of the neighborhood, who collected and began to stone him to death. — Not far from there the bandits also shot a certain Jew, who fell dead. They nevertheless picked him up and fastened his body to the fence, with cords, and then for a long time amused themselves with firing at this human target. — The bodies of many Jews slain have not even yet been brought to light, since many were buried by the bandits in the places where they were shot — outside the town, in ravines, fields, pits, etc. A week after the pogrom, twenty-eight bodies which had been insufficiently interred somewhere not far from Uman were uncovered; they lay near the road, and dogs began to attack them. Some of the bourgeoisie, fearing infection, stationed guards there, who drove the dogs away from the Jewish corpses with sticks. (Appendix 12.) The massacre was suspended towards evening on May 14, and the next day the insurgent newspaper printed appeals to the population, saying that the perpetration of pogroms was inadmissible, that it was a disgrace to the cause of freedom, etc. Proclamations were also printed of the Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius, and likewise orders from Klimenko, threatening to shoot those who incited to further pogroms. The agitation against pogroms and their inciter, whom the rebel newspaper identified as a certain local priest (Nikolsky) and the local tsarist officials, was carried on by it very zealously. The same newspaper was eager to show that those responsible for the pogrom were only the petty bourgeois of the city, the inhabitants of the suburb Lysaia Gora, and the offscourings of the town, but not the insurgent peasants. (Appendix 13.)
With the end of the massacre and of pillaging en masse, the situation of the Jewish population improved only relatively. Hounding and persecution of them in very many ways did not cease all the time that the rebels were on the ground. The most oppressive persecution of all was the refusal of the peasants and the town merchants to sell anything whatsoever, and especially foodstuffs. Bread immediately rose from three rubles to twelve or fifteen rubles per pound. The rebel peasants said that they would starve the Jews to death. The suburbanites and the bourgeois living near the city kept urging the peasants not to sell the Jews anything; they themselves bought the peasants' products for a song and sold them at profiteers' prices. They also spread rumors that the Jews had poisoned wells, etc., and so made the peasants afraid to go to markets and bring their products there. The malice against the Jews expressed itself
UKRAINE