CHAPTER TWELVE
Scenes from the week long raids: Stavishche, November–December 1919
On Simchat Torah 5680 (1919), the Jews of Stavishche danced in celebration, feeling revived.I Arks in the synagogues were opened, and men carried and kissed the precious Torah scrolls. In Pitsie Avram’s shul, Isaac and Rebecca looked on proudly as Channa and Sunny joined the procession of children who paraded around the building carrying little blue-and-white flags with an apple and a lighted candle on top.II It was just a brief moment of happiness before the next wave of anti-Semitic violence entered the already pogrom-ravaged village.
It was as if the bandits believed that the Jews were hiding an infinite supply of riches. Many different bands of hoodlums in Ukraine continued targeting Jews by pillaging their homes in town after town. By the end of November 1919, the Jews of Stavishche had already endured the raids of Dabravalsky, Kravtshenko, Gribenko, the Bazenevtes, Zhelezniak, Petliura, Karnivsky, Mazali, Zeleny, and various other wandering and intermittent peasant gangs. While local thugs continued their plundering, the Denikins, under the leadership of the Russian general Anton Denikin, who led the White forces, also raided Stavishche.
Channa’s uncle, Yunkel Cutler, experienced firsthand the brutality of the Denikins. After violating his home during the last week of November, the thugs threw Yunkel violently against the wall to shoot him. Despite their young age, his four children, Sarah, Sheva, Daniel, and Paul, understood all too well what was happening to their father. Watching the barrel of a loaded gun pointed at his father’s face, ten-year-old Daniel started screaming, “You can’t shoot my father; he hasn’t done anything to you!”
The Denikin soldier warned Daniel to move aside or he’d hit him with the butt of his gun. Daniel, who was a fearless child, screamed back in Russian, “You can hit me or shoot me, but you can’t shoot my father!”
Daniel’s mother, Esther, hurriedly threw some money in a refuse pail; it was just a few hundred rubles, but enough to momentarily distract the peasants. Yunkel, a powerful blacksmith, took advantage of the distraction and managed to pull the barrel of the gun away from his face while screaming for the others inside the house to run. Fifteen Jews, including Yunkel and his family, ran out of the back door toward the river; all but a sick woman and Daniel fled from the house. After seeing the fear in her eyes, the young boy, who did not know the woman well, felt compelled to remain behind to help her. In their rush to flee the home, the others did not realize that she was too weak to run on her own accord.
Daniel, who was mature well beyond his years, began screaming and crying, trying to further distract the bandits. One of the Denikins actually felt sorry for him and tried to console the young, fair-haired boy. The bandit took some cookies out of his pocket that he had stolen from a Jewish woman who had baked them earlier in the day. “Here, have this, youngster, and don’t cry.”
The sympathetic Denikin showed Daniel the door. The bandits could have shot and killed everyone in that house, and nobody would have known. They could have easily buried the bodies beneath the ice of the frozen Gniloi Tikich River out back.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
—Alexander Pope
After fleeing their home, Daniel and Sarah became separated from the rest of their family, but ran into their cousin, Sol Moser, while wandering by the river. Without their parents’ knowledge, the three children ran around town during the height of trouble. They disregarded the imminent danger around them. On account of their blondish hair, flawless Russian, and peasant clothing, the youngsters were able to move around freely during the Denikin raids without attracting the unwanted attention of the murderous “soldiers.”
The trio, while out near the Gniloi Tikich River, heard bloodcurdling screams coming from inside of their uncle Yoske Stepansky’s blacksmith shop. They ran over to the establishment and took turns peering through the window. Unnoticed by the bandits who had broken into the shop, the children witnessed the torture and murder of one of their cousins, Elek Stepansky.
A formidable man and a powerful blacksmith, Elek found himself outnumbered and cornered by this group of Denikin’s thugs. Forced at gunpoint to heat up and grab a blacksmith’s iron with his bare hands, the children looked on in silent horror and cringed as Elek’s palms sizzled from the burns. The bandits did not spare the life of the young husband and father of three. Later that same evening in Stavishche, Elek’s younger brother Mendel suffered a similar fate while their grandmother was axed to death.
Elek Stepansky’s young widow, Sheindel, felt the sharp sting of the pogroms as, one by one, the bandits claimed the lives of so many of her loved ones. Her father, Stavishche’s popular sixty-year-old wagon driver, Nachum Velvel Bershadsky, was slain by Petliura’s band; her uncle Yonah Bershadsky, a driver whose open wagon route covered the distance between Tarashcha and Stavishche, also lost his life in a pogrom attack. Two of her brothers, both soldiers in the tsar’s army, disappeared in the Crimea, and her young brother-in-law perished shortly after fleeing Stavishche to Belaya Tserkov during the raids.
As if the young widow hadn’t already suffered enough, the most painful horror would soon befall her. Hours after her husband’s vicious murder, Sheindel and her three small children sought refuge with a group of other Jews in the basement of a home belonging to a Gentile friend. When bandits burst into the house where they were hiding, her beautiful baby boy began to cry. In a desperate effort to keep him quiet, someone overpowered the young mother and forced a pillow over his tiny mouth, asphyxiating him. Devastated that she was unable to protect her child, Sheindel cried as she cradled the limp baby in her arms.III
As the middle of the night approached during the raids, more gunfire could be heard in Stavishche. Ten Jewish homes, some with families still inside of them, were set on fire. Esther and Yunkel Cutler and their four children, who escaped an attack by Denikin’s soldiers earlier in the day by fleeing through a back door of their home, reunited once again after walking aimlessly for hours through the thick smoke along the river’s edge. Esther was holding her son Daniel’s hand when a bandit on horseback began hitting the crowd with a whip to break them up. When the bandit struck Daniel in the head with his whip, the boy automatically let go of his mother’s hand, causing them to become briefly separated yet another time in the crowd during the mass evacuation.
After finding each other amid the turmoil, the Cutler family traveled all night by foot with many other refugees toward Belaya Tserkov. Along the way, the group came across a barn with inviting stacks of hay inside. Hungry, weak, and depleted of energy, they were so exhausted that they lay down on the hay and instantly fell asleep. Esther, who was thrilled to be reunited with Daniel again, fell asleep in the barn with her arms wrapped protectively around her son. However, Daniel could not ignore his growling stomach and left his mother’s side in search of food.
As he walked over to a gate, Daniel noticed a peasant farmer who was sharpening knives to cut the grass. Dogs started barking at Daniel, and the peasant looked up at him and said, “What is it, kid; what do you want?”
“I’m hungry.”
The farmer took in Daniel’s disheveled appearance and offered the boy a piece of bread with relish and some cider.
“Who are you with?” the farmer asked.
“My family,” Daniel told him.
The kindness of the farmer reminded the boy that not all Ukrainian peasants were anti-Semites. The farmer took out a loaf of black bread and a couple dozen eggs that he had cooked for the field workers, and handed them over to Daniel. Unable to believe his good luck, the boy dragged the food back toward the barn when he heard his mother frantically calling out for him.
“Meyn kind, meyn kind!”IV she yelled.
“Don’t worry, Mama. Look—I’ve got something to eat!”
Upon hearing mention of food, three heads emerged from a pile of hay, and another three heads appeared from another pile of hay…
“Don’t worry,” Esther said. “Whatever we’ve got, we’ll share.”
They shared their good fortune with everyone in the barn that night.
Chaos continued in all corners of Stavishche. At the other end of the town stood Sol Moser’s house, owned by his parents, Itzie and Haika. The dwelling was a large two-story building with wooden floors and a tin roof. By contrast, the poorer Jewish homes in Stavishche had clay floors and straw roofs. From each of the two beautiful balconies, one could see ducks and geese scurrying around in the yard.
The Mosers’ house was attached to their business. They owned a bakery with two ovens: one above the ground and one below. All the bandit groups raiding Stavishche stopped first at the bakery for bread to feed their men. The cellar that housed the underground bakery was dug into the earth. For the three days the Denikins raided Stavishche, between 150 and 200 Jews found refuge in this cellar. A big trunk on top of a trap door camouflaged the stairway leading down to the basement. While Jews from that side of town knew about the hiding place, strangers had no clue of its existence. A working stove used for baking bread made sure that there was no shortage of food downstairs.
As the Denikins began retreating from Stavishche, the Red Army soon took their place. The first scout that the Red Army sent into Stavishche had heard that inside of the Moser household was a Jewish bakery. In the middle of the night, at around one or two o’clock in the morning, Itzie Moser heard from the basement loud banging at his front door. Many Jews were still hiding in his basement, and he turned to two of his sons, Sol and Schmuelik, in despair. If he answered the door and it turned out to be the Denikins, they would surely kill him. True, it was a strong door, but the bandits would only need to break a window to force their way in.
Within minutes, Itzie heard a man call out in Yiddish amid the noise, “I’m a Jew, and a friend of all Jews!” (“Jews and comrades!” is a more literal translation.) Relieved at the sound of Yiddish, Itzie came out of hiding and went upstairs.
Three or four men were standing at his door with guns. The one who had knocked was only five feet tall, and his gun was bigger than he was. He said to Itzie, “Have no fear, we are not going to bother you; we’re from the Red Army.”
By this time, many Jews had enlisted in the Red Army. The soldiers only wanted to know when the Denikins had last raided the town. As time passed, and it was clear that the Denikins had truly left, Itzie put on the kerosene lamps, which shined down into the basement and illuminated the entire house. After three terrifying days, he announced to everyone that it was now safe to come out of hiding. For a very short time, anyway, the good guys were the Bolsheviks!V
As a result of being so closely confined indoors during the weeklong raids, a mysterious illness paralyzed Stavishche, causing devastation so great that the death toll nearly surpassed the number of murder victims. A fever that many believed registered as high as 107.6 degrees FahrenheitVI spread quickly, claiming victims from almost every Jewish family in town.VII
Convinced that it would be safer to return to Belaya Tserkov, Isaac and Rebecca prepared to leave once again, as did many of the Jews from their village. Although they didn’t realize it at the time, this would be the last time they would lay eyes on their hometown. On a cold December evening, as Denikin’s soldiers neared the end of their reign of terror over the town, the family fled under the cover of darkness to Mykola’s chicken farm on the outskirts of Stavishche. Isaac trusted that his young Gentile apprentice would shield his family from danger.
Mykola’s parents showed their guests a crawl space built above a baker’s oven, where the Jewish family could hide without being seen by any visitors. The old farmhouse, which was damp from the lack of coverings over its clay flooring, had a shelf that Mykola’s father built above that oven where the Caprove family huddled together to keep warm. Isaac’s family hid in that crawl space for several days, during both daylight and starlight, as they never knew who could be trusted. Bandits were known for betraying their own neighbors for money.
When things seemed quieter the following morning, Rebecca ventured out into the town to listen for news of the attacks. Like her sisters, she spoke fluent Russian and could easily circulate around Stavishche without fear of being detected as Jewish. When she finally returned to the farm that afternoon, her husband and daughters could see in her eyes that something was terribly wrong; she had been crying and was unable to look Isaac directly in the eyes.
“What is it?” Isaac asked.
Rebecca could barely get the words out.
“It’s Moishe—he’s gone.”
When Isaac heard that his only brother was dead, the shock was so great that he was rendered speechless. Channa and Sunny began crying hysterically; the girls adored their uncle Moishe, and they could not believe that they would never see him again. Their uncle was just thirty-two years old when he died. One of their last images of him, as a vibrant soldier in the tsar’s 31st Aleksopol Infantry Regiment, remained vivid in their minds. Moishe was an expert marksman and a decorated soldier who had been stationed just a few years earlier in Skierniewice, Poland. He had survived the war only to lose his life in a way that would never make sense to his family.
Isaac insisted that his wife take him to the Stavishche Hospital, Count Branicki’s Free Hospital for the Poor, where she had heard that Moishe had died. The cause of his death was unclear; the couple did not know if Moishe had suffered from the deadly illness that had spread across town or if he was a victim of violence. At the hospital, they met a nurse who knew Moishe and had tried to care for him herself.
“He had no money, so they took him on as a charity case,” she told the grieving couple. “A great number of those injured during the raids were brought here last night. Our beds were already filled with patients suffering from a fever. Their families were paying off doctors so that their loved ones would receive preferential treatment. Moishe passed away before a doctor could even examine him.”
Isaac was inconsolable. If only he had known, he would have paid any price for his brother to have received prompt medical treatment.
When her parents finally returned to the farm, eight-year-old Channa was relieved beyond words. She had been left in charge of four-year-old Sunny and her baby sister Fay, who had been crying all afternoon. She was grateful to finally hand the fussy infant over to her mother. After the family members were reunited again in the crawl space, Rebecca tried nursing the baby, but her breast milk supply had almost dried up.
That evening, a burly peasant, armed with two rifles, stopped by the farmhouse unannounced, leaving his horse with friends who waited for him outside. The family overheard the peasant questioning Mykola’s oldest brother. The peasant had noticed fresh wagon prints and consequently suspected that there were Jews hiding somewhere on the property. When he came inside to look around, Isaac, Rebecca, and their daughters held their breath, careful not to make the slightest sound. All of a sudden, Channa’s baby sister Fay, who couldn’t suckle enough of her Mama’s breast milk in order to satisfy her hunger, let out a loud cry.
It was one of those moments in life that could have changed everything. It would have been so much easier for Mykola’s Christian family to give up the Jewish family in order to save themselves; instead, they chose to protect their friends. The Caproves listened as Mykola, his father, and three older brothers encircled the armed hoodlum and pushed him roughly against the wall. The brothers were big fellows, and the peasant had good reason to be scared. Before the bandit had a chance to react, Mikola grabbed both guns from him.
“If you say anything, we’ll kill you right here!” Mykola threatened, knowing that there were others waiting outside.
“If we ever see or hear from you again, my sons will hunt you down like an animal and make you wish that you never stepped foot in my house!” the father promised.
The bandit was relieved to get out of the house alive. There was likely no doubt in his mind that Mykola and his brothers would not have hesitated to kill him on the spot.
Like most of the Jews from Stavishche, Isaac, Rebecca, and their three daughters left town and headed toward Belaya Tserkov again.
When a few remaining soldiers, under the leadership of the gray-bearded General Denikin, gathered a small group of Jews at gunpoint in the bet hamidrash, they forced everyone to strip off their clothing and confiscated all their belongings. The bandits then threatened to set the house of worship on fire. The elderly wife of the town’s travel agent became so afraid during the hostage crisis that she suffered a fatal heart attack and collapsed.
When Rabbi Pitsie Avram later arrived, he distracted the bandits by conversing with them in their native Russian. While the bandits were still immersed in conversation, the rabbi instructed the naked Jews in Yiddish to slip out of the back door, which they did, carrying out the old lady’s body with them. When the Denikins discovered his ruse, they threatened to cut off the rabbi’s right hand, but he begged and pleaded so wholeheartedly that they took pity on him and decided to hang him instead. They made the rabbi step up on a bench and were ready to hang him from the hook of a hanging lamp when their leader walked in. He stopped the execution and took the heroic rabbi home.
The last of Denikin’s hooligans left in the town feasted on food and liquor that they had ordered be brought to the bet hamidrash. As they sat around eating and drinking merrily, they toasted and shouted that all Christians should live a long life, and all Jews should die.VIII
1. I. Many of the 4,500 Jews who lived in Stavishche had returned to their homes.
2. II. The children carried flags on Simchat Torah to symbolize the tribal flags under which the Israelites marched in the desert. Blue-and-white flags were first adopted by the Zionist Movement back in 1897; it was later used as the official flag of Israel in 1948. The colors blue and white represent the colors of the Jewish prayer shawl. The apple with a candle on top was meant to evoke images of Torah as light. This procession was recalled by both Channa in an interview and her childhood friend Yosl Golub in the Stavishche Yizkor Book (see Notes). It is unclear if there was a separation of the boys and girls.
3. III. Soon afterward, her father-in-law, Yoske Stepansky, whose own brother, Lepe, the egg merchant, was shot and killed by bandits while he stood on his front doorstep, arranged for Sheindel and her two remaining children, Ite and Zelig, to flee the country. They finally settled safely in Argentina in 1926.
4. IV. Yiddish for “My child, my child!”
5. V. There were some Jews who joined the Bolsheviks, and others who would never do so. In this particular instance, the Moser family was just relieved to see Jewish soldiers at their door.
6. VI. This figure was converted into Fahrenheit: the results were dependent on the accuracy of the measuring devices available in Europe in 1919.
7. VII. During the week that Denikin’s army raided the town, a few of Channa’s neighbors were brought to the hospital, where they died from a high fever.
8. VIII. Khlavna Kohen, a former member of the Stavishche Town Authority, reported the physical threat against the rabbi and the singing of the drunken bandits in a circa 1920–1921 document entitled “Pogrom Happenings in Stavishche.” See Notes.