The town of Yanushpol, government of Volhynia, canton of Zhitomir, is 25 versts from Berdichev and 26 versts from the station of Demchin, Southwestern Railroad. It has seven or eight thousand population, with fifteen or eighteen hundred Jews. There is a sugar factory (granulated and refined) in the town. It is one of the largest in Volhynia, and belongs to Z. N. Gorenstein. The employees of the factory are mostly Jews.
The change from the Hetman's government to that of Petlura took place almost without trouble and without notice. After the disorders carried on by the secheviki (a kind of soldiers) there was some alarm in Berdichev and Yanushpol. Various rumors were afloat. The Jews organized night patrols for several nights. However, the alarm proved unnecessary. In general quiet reigned during the whole period of the Petlura regime. In the middle of February there appeared several communists,
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who came to Yanushpol to form a rebel detachment among the local peasants. The peasant youths willingly joined the detachment. A mobilization of peasants covering several years (of age) was declared. When they heard in Berdichev of what was going on in Yanushpol, a punitive detachment was dispatched thither, but it turned about midway on the road, because Soviet forces from the direction of Kasatin were approaching Berdichev. On the whole of the trip the secheviki chastised the Jews whom they met in the villages. Thus in the village of Karpovtzo all the property of several Jewish families was looted. Even a little synagogue was not spared; the sacred furnishings were destroyed, according to report. When Berdichev was taken by the bolsheviki, the insurgents from Yanushpol went to join them, together with the local guard.
On March 25, fair day, at 5 P.M., a cavalry detachment of Petlurists, commanded by Ataman Borisov, entered the town. They at once burst into several rather well-to-do Jewish homes and began to loot. In one house the telephone bell rang at this time. They permitted the owner to go to the telephone, but and beat him and accused him of giving secret information over the telephone. They hauled him to the ataman, maltreating him frightfully on the way. Others brought along his wife and other persons who happened to be in the house at the time. The ataman, however, understood how ridiculous the accusation was and let them go.
In the detachment there was a considerable percentage of Galicians and Poles. Many of them were richly dressed and had large sums of money with them. In general this detachment stood in cultural respects higher than the other detachments which arrived later. Among other things they said that Yanushpol was the only place where they had not been allowed to have a pogrom so far. They had acquitted themselves especially well, they said, in Novo-Chartoria. "After us," they said, "a baggage train is coming, and infant^, and you had better be afraid of them." On the next day, March 26, the secheviki opened the Jewish shops and gave permission to peasants, who rushed together from the surrounding villages, to take whatever they wanted. One soldier threw into the crowd a fifty-ruble note, saying as he did so that he had taken this from the Jews not for himself personally, but for the whole mass of the poor people. On the evening of the same day there began a visitation of the well-to-do houses. Wherever the secheviki found nothing to take, they cruelly beat everyone, large and small, with whips and gun-butts, etc. "You think I want your money," said one soldier; "I want to destroy your Jewish life." On the next day, March 27, the looting increased, and the bandits went around accompanied by peasant lads, who indicated where it was worth while to go in.