[Page 141]

A period of great upheaval passed over Russia following the October revolution.

Endless bitter battles took place between the Bolsheviks and their opponents. One regime followed the other: Bolsheviks Germans Poles, Ukrainians. Hetmans [field marshals], generals and ordinary captains formed factions. Jews were the scapegoat during this battle.

A wave of disturbances against the Jews of Russia ensued. There was murder, slaughter, and pogroms. Man turned into a wild beast. Leaders arose for the man-beast, encouraging and inflaming him to deeds of murder. Let the following names be remembered for eternal contempt: Petliura, Denikin, Kolchak, Wrangel, Balachowicz, Makhno, Semesenko, Grigurov, and Zliunov along with the names of Bogdan Chmielnicki and Gonta.

The cup passed through Slutsk as well. The regime changed and everyone pursued their predecessor with fury. Gangs of Belorussian murderers arose who took out their anger upon the Jews.

The Jews of Slutsk who traveled from city to city for business were captured by one of the gangs, whose members tortured them, murdered them, and then set them on fire. They brought the charred corpses to the city. All the Jews gathered around, and when they saw the slaughtered corpses, a cry burst forth from their throats: “L-rd G-d, please save us.” The place turned into a place of fear, weeping, and grief. A sense of atrocity and fear peered forth from their eyes. The youths made fists and gritted their teeth: Shall we fall to the perpetrators as guilty people?

In 1920, White Russia was in the hands of the Poles. However, the Poles began to retreat from the entire front after maintaining their regime throughout the Minsk region for a year. The Red Army opened a strong attack and expelled the Poles from Russia. They broke through the expanse of Poland and reached Warsaw while called out their fiery motto: We will advance to Warsaw.

The Poles displayed their heavy arm against the Jewish residents of Slutsk already during the first period after their entry. Previously, however, they displayed some sort of restraint, expressing themselves only with cursing the Jews, trimming their beards, cutting off their peyos, and uttering disparaging words. Things did not get more serious at that point, but along with their retreat, they began to pour out their wrath and anger against the Jews.

The front approached Slutsk, and the Polish soldiers became crueller. They began with looting. They would enter a shop and take what they wanted without paying. At first, the Jews tried to protect their property, but there were several cases where they paid a heavy price for daring to stand up to the pillagers. In one shop on Zarcha Street, the soldiers took the entire stock. The shopkeeper who was left emptyhanded pleaded with them, implored and begged. When none of this helped, and seeing that they were preparing to take his money, out of despair he grabbed the soldier who was holding the money in his hand and dragged him by force. The coins scattered on the ground. Both the Jew and the soldier crawled on the ground and started to collect the scattered coins, one from one side and the other from the other. The soldier became infuriated, grabbed his revolver, and within a moment shot a bullet through the heart of the shopkeeper.

This incident instilled fear and terror upon the entire city. Complaints to the authorities were to no avail. The high captains looked with hatred upon the Jews who came to complain, and would say: “There is no problem, you must be Bolsheviks, and it is no big deal if they flay your skin a bit.” The soldiers, however, spewed forth the entire venom from their mouths and began to perpetrate a wave of organized attacks. They would go from street to street and house to house with nobody to stop them. In the best case, they would only pillage what they saw. They would respond to any resistance with death blows. Their fear was especially great with the young women, and several cases of rape took place.

When the soldiers entered the houses, the Jews would abandon them, and burst forth outside shouting loudly: “Gevald! Pazshar!” [Alarm! Fire!]. There were cases where the screams were effective. The residents of Bobruiskai Street perfected this. When the soldiers came to a house on that street, all the residents would gather around and begin to shout: “Gevald, Pazshar, Ratevet.” [Alarm, Fire, Save us]. The screams were already well organized, and it was as if they had already mastered them, and their voices spread through the entire street. They would heed with their ears, and the accompany and chase the soldiers everywhere. The soldiers were left without recourse to fight against them, and they would scatter and administer beatings to the crowd. When they entered another house, the Jews would again gather and start to scream, until they [the soldiers] were forced to leave the street. In fact, that street suffered relatively less than the other streets.

In particular, a great fear would fall upon the residents of the city at night, when the pillaging reached its pinnacle. They would sleep in their clothes, ready to escape. They had already hidden their valuables some time previously. They would pack the rest of their belongings for fear of a fire, but it would be easier for the hooligans to pillage them.

Slutsk endured several days of fear and trepidation in this manner. The Jews went about as shadows. Nobody was certain of their lives and property. Despair increased. Only by acting with caution did the hope remain that the Bolsheviks might arrive in town while there was still time.

The Bolsheviks advanced continually, and already afflicted the city. The Poles prepared to retreat. Valuables were packed quickly and sent outside the city. Anything that they could not take was given over to be consumed by fire.

[Page 142]

The entire neighborhood was lit up at night: villages and farms were on fire. The horizon was always red. Then Slutsk itself was engulfed in flames. Bridges were blown up and warehouses were set on fire. The large, three-story business school that rose in splendor at the edge of the city, went up in flames, as did other houses. The sound of the shooting of cannons could already be heard from close by, and explosive cannonballs reached the city. Houses were ruined and destroyed… Within this upheaval, the Polish soldiers still found time to torture the Jews, even though they knew that they would have to leave the city within a short time. They would hasten to their prey.

Then, three tall, thin soldiers entered a certain house at the edge of the city near a wide field. Their faces were fiery and their eyes exuded fury. They were carrying in their hands some packages that they had still managed to pillage from several houses. A Jewish family with their only daughter Mirele lived in that house. Despite the urging of the neighbors, they did not want to leave the house under any circumstance. The young daughter did not want to part from her parents. By chance, the soldiers had skipped over that house all the time, but this time, the cup was passed to them as well.

“Mirele, escape quickly from here,” the distressed mother managed to shout. But the soldiers had already sealed the door. They had not yet been able to see clearly who was in the house. “Give money, Jew,” shouted one of the soldiers to Mirele's father in a scary voice, as he waved his fist toward his face. They spread out to the rooms, with one searching through the closet and the second dealing with the drawer.

Mirele stood in her place in shock. Her thoughts raced through her head. One soldier shut the door and stood next to her, as two of them grabbed Mirele and tossed her on the bed. At the first moment that they touched her she was in shock, and she lost consciousness and was not aware of anything. However, when a heavy hand began to grope her body hungrily, she regained consciousness and clearly realized what was about to happen to her. A shudder went through her body, and without uttering a word, she used her remaining energy to protect her life and her honor. She bit with her teeth and mauled with her nails, but what is the strength of a weak girl against two healthy soldiers who were overcome with lust, and whose strength was doubled due to the victim being in their hands?

One soldier grabbed her hands and the second began to rip off her shirt and dress. Mirele continued to struggle, but her resistance weakened. She felt heavy breathing next to her. She saw a fearsome face near her face, black, covered with ash from the fire, and with a layer of mud, and as if overtaken by spasms. With amazing clarity, she saw a shaggy head of hair, large, yellow teeth bared like a wolf ready to maul its prey, a large, broad nose making a cruel gesture at her. She felt that her legs were exposed, and a heavy body hovering over her… Her energy left her, her breath stopped. In despair, she placed her two hands on the soldier's neck and attempted to strangle him… At that moment, the shutter of one of the windows opened, and a scream was heard from many mouths: “Gevald, Pazshar!!!” The scream was mighty and frightening. Various different voices were heard: the heavy voices of men, crying out and shouting; the voices full of wailing and sobbing of women; as well as the thin voices of children. Great fear, terror and despair were sensed from these voices – the end of all the ends…

The soldiers were shaken by the suddenness of this scream, and they flinched. Suddenly, Mirele gained a huge amount of energy. She pushed away the soldiers with force, jumped toward the window with the open shutter, shattered the windowpane with her two hands, and stood before the crowd of Jews that had gathered next to the house. Her hair was disheveled, anger came forth from her mouth, and her eyes rose from their sockets. Her dress and shirt were ripped, and the cleavage of her body could be seen through the holes in her clothes.

She raised who two hands that had been cut from the glass shards toward the Jews. She stood in her place, with her face overcome by fright and terror. When the Jews saw her, they renewed the screaming and wailing with greater intensity. Some of them spread their hands toward her. They banged their hands together, and women began to tear out the hear of their heads. Suddenly… noise and panic were heard, the sound of shooting approached, the rattle of cannons. The galloping of horses could be heard, along with shouts of “Hurrah, Hurrah”… the Bolsheviks had penetrated the city.

The Polish soldiers who were still standing in shock from the screams of the Jews recovered their composure, burst forth from the house, and tried to escape through the fields. However, the Jews surrounded them from all sides. “Capture them, grab them,” they shouted. It was as if the fear had departed from them. A single feeling pervaded the crowd: revenge for the atrocities, for the honor that had been disgraced and degraded, for the life that was snuffed out, for the women who had been raped. People lay their hands toward the soldiers from all directions. All the suffering and bitterness that were enclosed within the soul burst out in new paths. They began to grab the soldiers, remove their armored helmets, beat them with clenched fists and with the broken sticks and boards that were rolling about, with anything that they could get their hands on.

The soldiers, who could not imagine such brazenness from the Jews, were subdued. It was as if the expression on their cruel faces had melted. They stood without any recourse against the large crowd who surrounded them. Their faces exuded despair. Their faces quickly turned into a pile of puffy dough. They fell to the ground. People trampled over them, beat them, and slapped the mercilessly…

In the meantime, shouts of joy were heard in the streets. The Poles fled from the city, and the few who did not succeed in escaping were subject to the justice of the lynching crowd. Bolsheviks appeared from all directions, with smoking guns in their hands. They were drunk from victory.

The Jews greeted the soldiers with shouts of joy. They hugged them, wept from joy, with their faces beaming. What awaited them in the future did not matter. They did not care that they had not experienced contentment during the time of Bolshevik rule. The main thing was to be free of the terrible nightmare that they had endured, and not to think too much about the future. For at the current moment, the entry of the Bolsheviks was a sign of liberation, and the protection of life and honor.

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