we know you Jews, we know your Jewish machinations." They turned their first attention to a man who lived in our house, Berkovetz, an employee of a bank, and began to insist that he was a commissar. They took him into a separate room and began to beat him unmercifully. They made the same accusation against almost every man in our apartment, calling him either a commissar or a communist, and adding: "We will show you a commune." Then they demanded that all of us — men, women and children — should vacate the apartment and go down into the yard. On the way many of us were beaten, no distinction being made between men and women, adults and children. In the courtyard they ordered us all to stand "against the wall," but then changed the order and ordered the women and children to go apart, while the men had to remain "against the wall." When we, feeling something evil was coming, began to entreat them to take from us everything they liked, to take our money, the rebels, refusing all our entreaties, gave the command: "One, two, three," and fired a volley, killing our relatives and acquaintances almost before our eyes. The slain included my brother Misha, aged 18; Berkovetz, aged 35; Litvak, aged 68; Handelsmann, aged 60; a physician, aged 52; Handelsmann's son, a gymnasium student, aged 17, and an old man of 70. My father was also made to stand against the wall, but was only wounded by a bullet, and escaped to the barn without the notice of the rebels, where he spent some time in concealment. When the rebels found him there, he succeeded in persuading them to spare him, having convinced them that he was not a communist. My brother-in-law Kushnir, my sister's husband, was also placed against the wall, and escaped accidentally only because in the group of the corpses he also was thought to be dead. After shooting all the men in our house, the rebels commanded all of us women to go to the cellar to sleep, beating us with gun-butts the while. As I learned afterwards, this same gang went to our neighbors, Russians, and, after finding that they were Russians, began to boast of their murders. One of them said: "I have avenged to some extent the death of my brother Shtogrin; I killed a lot of people in the Kahan house." All night long in our apartment upstairs the pillaging of our property continued. At eleven at night my father, who we supposed was killed, came to us. He told us how he had been found in the barn, how he had been led through the apartment and forced to open up all chests and boxes, and how the plundering of the apartment and the destruction of our goods were going on. Early in the morning, on May 13, we began to wonder
UKRAINE
how we could get our wounded, my sister and brother-in-law, to the hospital. Someone reported it in the city, and thence came two Christian workmen from Kushmir's factory, who brought hospital people. On the road cries were heard: "We won't let Jews be saved!" and with great difficulty we got to the hospital, abandoning our apartment to the will of fate. As was afterwards discovered, the rebels threw two bombs into Vitis's apartment, causing a fire in that apartment. We heard that the rebels accused us, the inhabitants of that house, of having hidden dynamite there. For two weeks we did not return home. Among the wounded who died was Sura Handelsmann, wife of Handelsmann who was shot, and whose family was thus totally destroyed.
M. ZHURAVSKAIA. July 21, 1919.
IV. Testimony of Joseph Isaakovich Polonsky, Mechanical Engineer, Aged 29