Thus Thursday passed. The most terrible thing of all in our town took place on Friday. Other witnesses have already reported this to you. In my opinion young peasants took the most active part in the pogrom. The old men were indifferent to what happened. On Friday I was no longer in Slovechno, but on Friday evening I started back as a volunteer with the first detachment which came to the town. After spending the night in Pokalevo we arrived in Slovechno towards morning on Saturday. We could get no carts from peasants on the way, and the men of our detachment were terribly tired. I think that the weak action of the commander of our detachment was responsible for this. He was a sailor, who apparently had no intention of taking energetic action with reference to the peasants. Before we came nearer than two versts to Slovechno our detachment spread out in a chain and surrounded the town with its flanks. In the town we perceived a rather large crowd which began to disperse upon our appearance; only a few of the crowd were caught in our chain; some of them we shot. The head bandits, whom I know very well, escaped. One we caught with a rifle and afterwards took to Ovruch. In the town we found a spectacle which it is hard to describe. It is hard to believe that this was reality and not a nightmare. Not a living soul on the streets. A herd of cows was wandering about the town; the peasants had turned them loose when they heard that the bolsheviki were approaching; the cows belonged to Jews. On the street broken articles were scattered about, corpses were lying, traces of blood were everywhere. The houses showed external signs of devastation (broken windows and doors); in the yards everything was in confusion; in the houses into which we looked lay corpses, including the bodies of children. In the town I noticed the priest coming out of his house with his daughter. After him I noticed a girl, whom I knew, coming out, with a crazed appearance; at first I hardly recognized her. The priest had a calm and majestic appearance, and walked triumphantly along the street with the aspect of beneficence (of his role in the occurrences you probably know from other testimony).
We did not venture to remain long in the town, since we could not rely on our forces, and we abandoned the place. As we were leaving we saw peasants hiding things which they evidently had stolen. When we tried to stop these peasants, the
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commander of our detachment prevented us from doing so. He even said that in the detachment "Jewish national feeling was too much aroused," and that this was "not appropriate." We could, I think, have soon established order in the town, if we had only met at least a few living people, from among our friends, seeking our aid. We saw no one in the town. A wilderness received us. We saw only bandits, and lost heart from this. The attitude to us of our commander and of certain elements in our detachment still more disturbed us and deprived us of the necessary courage and energy.
To all that I am communicating to you I should like to add a few words about our Slovechno Rabbi, who was killed in Ratner's house during the pogrom. This Rabbi was, in the literal sense of the words, an ornament and a pride of our town. Absolutely every one loved and respected him. Himself orthodox, he enjoyed the sympathy of all free-thinking people. He was not in sympathy with any pressure upon the conscience and opinions of others. He was a man of broad views, who allowed complete freedom even to his own family, and among the orthodox population of the town his family was the most liberal. This man had an enormous influence, not only among the Jews; even the peasants applied to him to decide their quarrels. He was about fifty years old.
GOLDBERG.
II. Testimony of Y. M. Melamed. Relation of the Peasants to Us before the Pogrom
At the time when pogroms were widespread throughout all Ukraine, our peasants took a quite kindly attitude towards us. They even promised to protect the town from the attacks of pogromists of other villages. After the occupation by the bolsheviks of Ovruch and its canton, they changed somewhat, to be sure, saying that this was a "Jewish regime," but still they didn't touch the Jews. The first anti-Semitic movement began in the village of Tkhorin, where under the watchword "away with communist speculators" they would not admit into the village Jewish widows, who were coming there with pots to exchange them for a piece of bread or potatoes. The matter went so far that during the last two weeks before the pogrom, there and on the road to the village of Begun (four versts from Slovechno), Jews were beaten and robbed of their last piece of bread and their last potatoes, which they were bringing home to their unhappy children. The Executive Committee of the district took no measures to stop these unjust actions.