the depths of his own courtyard. Miss Rosenstein herself fled to her aunt's, but when towards morning it was learned that the soldiers were especially interested in young girls, she fled back and joined her sister at the home of the Polish locksmith. But it was overcrowded there, and therefore the Pole took her over to the dwelling of the German sausage-man. In the morning, with a great crowd of peasants from the neighboring villages, especially "katzaps" (Ukrainians) from the village of Nitia (eight versts from Emilchino), the soldiers began to break into stores and together with the peasants to carry out everything that was in them. This continued till two o'clock. At this time one Jew was killed, the first victim of the Emilchino pogrom, Khaikel Brausmann, aged 50, who ran out of his home to save his iron-shop. By two o'clock, out of a hundred shops, more than half were looted. About this time the soldiers began to visit houses, accompanied by groups of peasants who by this time had been greatly excited by the soldiers' propaganda. Peasants of the locality took part in the looting only to a very insignificant extent. So it went on all day long. Towards night the agitation became especially great. Reports were heard from some source or other that the soldiers were promising to massacre the whole population at night. The night passed, however, all right. Towards morning on April 11 the detachment left in the direction of Novograd-Volynsk. The Jews thought it was all over and started to return to their abandoned homes. But suddenly the detachment appeared again. Afterwards it was explained that during the night, after drinking heavily, the soldiers got to quarreling, and one of their number was wounded. The soldiers decided to make use of this incident and give it the proper application. And so, when they had already gone eight versts and reached the village of Sereb, the detachment turned back and burst into the town to complete the devastation. The peasants accompanied them on this day. The shops that had escaped the day before were opened, and to finish them off were set on fire. The soldiers set machine guns before the shops and threatened to shoot anyone who should go up to put out the fires. Since the burning shops were in the neighborhood of the church, and the conflagration threatened to reach it, the priest came out to the crowd with the cross in his hands and addressed them with the following words: "I do not protect Jews and their property, but you have shed enough blood already, and plundered enough, and besides, remember that now even the orthodox church may suffer." This had its effect, and they did not start any more fires, continuing, however, to plunder the houses. Towards morning the detachment left the town for good, leaving it completely desolate and ruined. In the two days of the pogrom 11 people were killed, 18 shops burned, more than 300,000 rubles in money stolen, and the value of 21 to 23 millions in wares and private property (at valuations far from market prices).
CHERNIAKHOV ( F VOLYHNIA) Pogroms: January, March, July Testimony of Z. Kh. Verkhovsky
The town of Cherniakhov is in the canton of Zhitomir, twenty versts from Zhitomir. It has five hundred Jewish families.
On Thursday, January 10, two days before the Zhitomir pogrom, a cavalry detachment appeared at night and arrested the "patrol." On Friday they, together with the mounted militia, would not let people go out of their houses, and arrested them on the streets. On the next day, January 11, in the evening, shooting began; the peasants of the neighboring villages gathered; they plundered all the shops and some dwellings. The government of the town disappeared. On Saturday, during the day, a telegram was received from Kiev from the Jewish National Secretariat that measures were being adopted against disorders, the responsibility for which rested on all the population. They went with this telegram to the government of the district (volost). Then a detachment was secretly organized, which arranged an ambush and killed the ringleader of the looters, Bezdetko, a well-known thief and burglar, going by the nickname of "Pup." In this detachment the son of Stefanchuk, former commander of militia, who had been killed by this same bandit, took part.