ommune." They maltreated and beat up every Jew they met. After a little time they began to drag all the men and boy-children out of the houses, and, beating them unmercifully, took them off, either, as some said, to be registered, or, as others said, to be arrested and shot. By evening all the men had been caught and locked up in a twostory building of the former Commissariat, under guard of armed bandits. A fearful night ensued for the town, left without men. The bandits carried on terribly, looting, killing, and violating women. In this night eighteen people were killed, including two women. The bacchanalia did not stop the next morning, May 10. On the contrary, the looting activities of the bandits in the place increased. It is hardly possible to describe what the women experienced, when they found out at this same time that outside the town, by a reservoir where the refuse of the factory was thrown out, the bandits for some reason had already dug a great trench of military style, thirty-five arshins long. No one was any longer permitted on the street leading to the station, and none of the women had the slightest information as to what was going on at the Commissariat with the whole mass of Jews herded in there. Although the grave dug in advance bore clear testimony to the fact that the fate of the martyrs had been decided in the morning, nevertheless the monarchists and counter-revolutionaries -of all styles summoned an assembly at two o'clock in the town hall under the presidency of Belousov. The question "what to do with the Jews" was brought up. The opinions were various. The majority of the assembly was against the mass execution of all the Jews. Suddenly there rushed up on horseback a hangman who played the deciding role in this tragedy — a certain Drevinsky, who had then been declared commandant of the rebels, a former Petlurist officer. He shouted: "Brothers, to the harness, quickly! The Jews from Obodovka and Verkhovka are coming up behind us in armored automobiles. Run and finish up the Jews once for all." With wild cries of "Brothers, kill the Jews," the savage mob rushed headlong to the building of the Commissariat, surrounded it, and began firing through the windows, and throwing in bombs and hand grenades. Frantic cries and groans rent the air. The grenades flew, and with them were torn and mangled the bodies of over 400 men and boys, mad with horror and anguish. Someone shouted the bloody watchword, "Don't leave them alive, blot them out"— being sure that such a crowd could not so easily and quickly be done to death. So they broke into
UKRAINE
the building of the Commissariat and with knives, bayonets, axes, and other weapons completed their vile work. Long continued the wild, bloody dance of death. Here were torments and tortures such as the world had never seen. The victims swam in rivers of their own blood. Here in inconceivable anguish fathers with their only sons or with three or five sons breathed their last. Here fresh youths perished in their fathers' arms. Thus from 5 till 10 P.M. on May 11 the unhappy wretches were totally destroyed. The fragments of the four hundred bodies were gathered up and thrown into the ditch which had been prepared before. Next morning the hooligans quickly formed a detachment out of their own midst, which would not allow any of the women to leave the houses. Cries, wails, and hysterical laments shook the air day and night for a whole week, until the following Saturday, May 17. Under the organized guard of bandits, peasant women carried off the remnants of the Jews' property and provisions, to the sound of the tocsin bells, which did not cease all the week. At the end of the week, when a Red army detachment arrived, the bandits of the district of Trostianetz had already succeeded in settling with the other neighboring towns of Obodovka, Verkhovka, and Voprianka, and exhibited in battle array a force armed with rifles, machine guns, etc.
At the present time the widows and orphans, amounting to almost 900 souls, naked, hungry, penniless, defenseless, and dishonored, are cowering in their terrible anguish and sending their curses at the whole world. The bandits have not even yet been caught or disarmed; they strut about the town and express their hostility to the widows and orphans who remain alive.
Result of Our Application for Help to the Soviet of the Government of Podolia, and to the Military and Party Institutions of the city of Vinnitsa*