“The warehouse?” I asked. “What happened there?”
“The worst you can imagine,” the doctor replies. “Those scenes no human power can describe. It wasn’t murder there—only a few were killed in the warehouse. It was the women, the girls, even children … When the soldiers pogromed the synagogue, many of the women succeeded in gaining the street. As if by some instinct they collected afterwards in the warehouse—a big outhouse that had not been used for many years. Where else were the women to go? It was too dangerous at home; the mob was searching for the men who had escaped from the synagogue and was slaughtering them on the street, in their homes, wherever found. So the women and girls gathered in the warehouse. It was late at night and the place was dark and still. They feared to breathe, almost, lest their hiding-place be discovered by the hooligans. During the night more of the women folk and some of their men also found their way to the warehouse. There they all lay, huddled on the floor in dead silence. The cries and shrieks from the street reached them, but they were helpless and every moment they feared discovery. How it happened we don’t know, but some soldiers did find them. There was no pogrom there, in the ordinary sense. There was worse. The Commander himself gave orders that a cordon of soldiers be stationed at the warehouse, that no pogrom was to be made, and that no one be permitted to leave without his permission. At first we did not understand the meaning of it, but the terrible truth soon dawned on us. On the second night several officers arrived, accompanied by a strong detachment, all mounted and carrying lanterns. By their light they peered into the faces of the women. They selected five of the most beautiful girls, dragged them out and rode away with them. They came again and again that night … They came every night, always with their lanterns. First the youngest were taken, girls of fifteen and twelve, even as young as eight. Then they took the older ones and the married women. Only the very old were left. There were over four hundred women and girls in the warehouse, and most of them were taken away. Some of them never returned alive; many were later found dead on the roads. Others were abandoned along the route of the withdrawing army … they returned days, weeks later … sick, tortured, everyone of them infected with terrible diseases.”
The doctor pauses, then takes me aside. “Can an outsider realize the whole depth of our misfortune?” he asks. “How many pogroms we have suffered! The last one, by Denikin, continued eight days. Think of it, eight days! Over ten thousand of our people were slaughtered; three thousand died from exposure and wounds.” Glancing toward Reb Moishe, he adds in a hoarse whisper: “There is not a woman or girl above the age of ten in our city who has not been outraged. Some of them four, five, as high as fourteen times. … You said you were about to go to Kiev. In the City Hospital there you will find seven children, girls under thirteen, that we succeeded in placing there for medical treatment, mostly surgical. Everyone of those girls has been outraged six and more times. Tell America about it—will it still remain silent?”
XXIX
Kiev
The Krestchatik, Kiev’s main thoroughfare, pulsates with intense life. Straight as an arrow it lies before me, a magnificent broad avenue stretching far into the distance and finally disappearing in the superb Kupetchesky Park, formerly the pride of the city. Ancient, the storms of time and human strife defying, Kiev stands picturesquely beautiful, a radiant mosaic of iridescent foliage, golden cathedrals and monasteries of exotic architecture, and green-clad mountains towering on the banks of the Dnieper flowing majestically below.
Recent days revived the bloody scenes the old city had witnessed in the centuries past, when Mongol and Tartar, Cossack, Pole, and fierce native tribes had fought for its possession. But more sanguinary and ferocious have been the struggles of yesterday. Foreign armies of occupation, German, Magyar, and Austrian, native gaidamaki, Poles, Russians—each turned the ancient city into a shamble. Skoropadsky, Petlura, Denikin, like the savage atamans of Gogol’s tales, have vied with each other in filling the streams that crimson the Dnieper in these the darkest days of Russia.
Incredible vitality of man! Exasperating, yet blessed brevity of human memory! Today the city looks bright and peaceful—forgotten is the slaughter, forgotten the sacrifices of yesterday.
The streets, full of movement and color, contrast strikingly with the sickly exhaustion of northern cities. Stores and restaurants are open, and the bakeries display appetizing pirozhniye, the sweets so dear to the Russian heart. Most of the business signs are still in their accustomed places, some in Russian, others in the Ukrainian language, the latter predominating since the famous decree of Skoropadsky when overnight all shingles had to be “Ukrainianized.” The boulevards are alive with people, the women larger and less beautiful than in Kharkov, the men stolid, heavy, unprepossessing.
It is a month since the Poles left the city: the Bolsheviki have not yet had time to establish completely their regime. But the reports of Polish destruction, so industriously circulated in Moscow, prove baseless. Little damage has been done by the enemy, except the burning of some railroad bridges on the outskirts of the city. The famous Sofiysky Cathedral and the Michailovsky Monastery are undisturbed in their imposing
