CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Last week of October, 1920
They were all desperate and eager to leave Ukraine. Everybody that is, except for Shalum, the husband of Rebecca’s oldest sister, Hiya, who shared the same first name as their older brother. Despite Hiya’s entreaties, her domineering husband refused to allow their family to leave Europe. Shalum’s business took precedence over everything, and he was not about to give up his comfortable life. Despite his insistence, however, he was no fool. He realized that to remain in Ukraine as a Jew was a death wish.
At that time, Jews were escaping the smaller towns as pogrom after pogrom exploded throughout the countryside. Shalum decided that their only option was to convert. The village priests promised Shalum and Hiya emphatically that they would be safe after their conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith.I Shalum did not hesitate. He gave the village priests the go-ahead to enroll their children in a Christian school. In short, he chose his grocery store over his faith and ignored his wife’s desperate pleas to leave with her family to America. Hiya continued to beg her husband to change his mind and only gave up when her sister Bessie packed up to join the rest of the family on the wagon caravans.
As a single act of defiance, Hiya secretly took Bessie to the grocery store that she owned with her husband. Without her spouse’s knowledge or approval, Hiya sent her youngest sister away with a bag of much sought-after groceries, including a large sack of wheat, which was worth a fortune. When the rest of her family saw Bessie arrive in Belaya Tserkov dragging the large sack behind her, they were excited. Wheat was food, and they all needed food.
Sol Moser
Although he was not departing with the large caravan, news of Channa’s friend Sol Moser spread as members of the group were preparing their own wagons for the journey. In the upcoming months, Sol would also be preparing to leave Belaya Tserkov for the port in Romania. His aunt had finally obtained visas for her son and daughter to immigrate with her to America, but one child was drafted into the army, and the other died tragically during the long waiting period. Their aunt chose to pluck the orphaned Sol and his sister, Goldie, from the streets of Belaya Tserkov and take them with her to Boston in her children’s place.
When word reached Sol and Goldie’s older brother, Schmuelik, that his two youngest siblings were leaving, he walked the twenty-eight-mile journey from his home in Stavishche to Belaya Tserkov to say goodbye to them. Seeing his little brother standing before him in his pitiful stocking feet, Schmuelik took off his only pair of Russian leather boots and insisted that his younger brother wear them on his journey to America. They were two sizes too big, but he assured the ten-year-old that he would soon grow into them. More important, Schmuelik insisted that Sol should be wearing a pair of boots when he first stepped foot on the streets of the Goldene Medina.
On the morning of their planned departure, Channa was sitting with her mother and aunt Bessie in a wagon preparing for their journey; they were hiding jewels and money by sewing them into the linings of their winter coats. While the women stitched, Bessie’s eyes filled up with tears. Rebecca and Channa assumed that she was thinking of a young Jewish man that she had met after the murder of her husband. He had fallen in love with her and wanted to be with her, but could not bear to watch Bessie suffer so deeply as a result of the pogroms. He had to try to do something to fight back and put a stop to the endless Jewish suffering around him.
In 1920, Bessie’s boyfriend decided to join the Red Army, which he considered to be the only band at the time coming to the rescue of his people. Bessie begged him not to enlist, but even his own mother’s pleas were fruitless. That day, as she sat with her sister and young niece and sewed in preparation for the journey, Bessie revealed to them her love for this man. He was never seen or heard from again.
However, there may have been yet another man who was occupying Bessie’s thoughts. She was harboring a well-guarded secret that would not be revealed until one of her young grandnieces overheard a conversation between Bessie and her sister-in-law Esther Cutler two decades after the family fled Europe.
Following the brutal murder of her young husband, Bessie fell in love with a count—a landowner whom she called “Graf Paul.” Not much is known of their relationship, but from what was inferred years later, the nobleman kept a proper distance, loving the pretty young widow from afar. When a dangerous bandit attack ensued in Bessie’s village, Paul could no longer keep away. Sensing that her life was in imminent danger, he literally swept her off her feet and carried her to the safety of his estate, where he was still living after the war. When Graf Paul placed her down lovingly on his elegant sofa, he had every intention of consummating their relationship.
Despite her great affection for the nobleman, Bessie harbored mixed feelings about becoming involved with him romantically. To avoid his advances, she pretended to fall asleep on the sofa. After waiting for the handsome count to doze beside her, Bessie sneaked away and left the estate. She knew that Paul would wake up the next morning and find her gone; they would never see one another again.
Bessie sat solemnly in the wagon, waiting to leave for Romania, reflecting on her tragic past while wondering what the future would hold for her; in this she was not alone.
Deep in thought, the family huddled closely together. The carriages were open, and everyone dressed in many layers to keep warm. What little valuables they had left were strategically hidden between the iron wheels of the wagons. Jewels that were not sewn into the linings of their coats were instead baked inside the loaves of bread that were carried in baskets. The men, who bought weapons for protection during the journey, were prepared to fight any bandits who were hiding in woods in search of prey.
There were no paved roads, and the terrain was expected to be rough and bumpy. Mostly young families boarded these wagon trains, with the exception of a few elderlies, including Barney Stumacher’s parents and his nearly eighty-year-old aunt Frieda Ravicher. Blind in both eyes, she was determined to make it to America to be with two of her sons who had left for the United States fifteen years earlier, in 1905.
Nearly eighty refugees had loaded onto these wagons, ready to begin a nearly two-hundred-mile trek toward Romania. They had abandoned their homes in Europe forever. Each shared the same prayer: to survive the treacherous journey ahead of them. On a bitterly cold October morning, the families set out on a dozen wagons, almost blindly, traveling in a southerly direction through the most ravaged part of the civil war–torn Ukraine.
Zeyde Kalman (Carl Cutler)
There was one person of great importance who was noticeably absent on the wagon trains as the Cutler families set forth on their journey. Rebecca’s father, Carl Cutler, whom the children lovingly called Zeyde Kalman, was still alive, living and hiding among his Gentile friends in Skibin. After the death of his wife, Fay, three and a half years earlier, Carl’s children all wanted him to come and live with them, but he was determined to remain independent. Zeyde Kalman vehemently insisted that he didn’t want to become a burden to his grown children.
Carl’s children sent a letter by messenger asking him to join them, but they weren’t optimistic that he would receive it on time. Carl was in hiding, and the messenger that they finally found going in his direction had a difficult time locating him. His children knew that they were racing against the clock to get word to him; they could not travel without the group to Romania and would be forced to leave whenever Barney’s entourage decided to depart.
Rebecca’s oldest brother, Shalum Cutler, had by this time left Belaya Tserkov and had moved his large family north to the larger city of Kiev. Their family was well-established and successful, and they did not want to leave. Word was sent out to Shalum so that he could send his oldest daughter to look for Zeyde Kalman, in the event that he turned up in Belaya Tserkov after the family’s departure. His children and many grandchildren all counted the days and then the hours, praying that the old man would arrive in Belaya Tserkov on time to leave with them. Unfortunately, their worst fears materialized: he never showed up. His two sons and three daughters were all devastated.
Soon after they left Belaya Tserkov, Zeyde Kalman arrived at their departure spot, possessions in hand, only to discover that his five youngest children, along with his grandchildren, had already left without him for the Goldene Medina. When he reached Belaya Tserkov and realized that he would never see most of his family again, he dropped to his knees and was inconsolable for days. Somehow, he found his way to the grave of his baby granddaughter Fay and then cried over the little girl that he’d never known. Carl Cutler never had the opportunity to visit his children and grandchildren in Belaya Tserkov, since the country was in chaos, and travelers were often robbed and killed. The visit would have required an entire day and night’s travel by wagon—far too much unrest and exertion for an elderly man.
Shalum Cutler’s married daughter, who still lived nearby in Belaya Tserkov, heard what happened and went to fetch her grandfather. She brought him to Kiev to live with her father. Zeyde Kalman stayed with Shalum for a while but eventually chose to return by himself to his home in Skibin. Soon afterward, his children heard the news that he had died there alone of a broken heart.
The Destruction of Tetiev
During the course of their journey, the wagon group stopped in Tetiev, a town not far from Stavishche and about thirty-four miles from Belaya Tserkov.II Once upon a time, Tetiev had a Jewish population of thousands, but now there were barely any remnants of Jewish life left in this city of ruins. Rubble and ashes remained where the old, somewhat oriental-looking wooden synagogue, the bet hamidrash, once stood.
Just seven months earlier, in March 1920,III a horrible massacre had occurred. The entourage sat in their wagons on the very spot where between 1,500 and 2,000 Jews had sought safety hiding in the temple’s loft. Several former Petliura officers, headed by Ataman Kurovsky, stood by the side of their colleague OstrovskyIV as he incited hate in a speech, calling for the extermination of every Jew. He demanded the crowd take an oath not to spare any Jewish life, even in exchange for a payoff. The carnage began on Wednesday, the fifth of Nissan, when screams of men, women, and children could be heard across Tetiev. Executioners broke into houses and businesses and murdered every Jew they could find.
Young children were snatched from their parents and thrown violently against the pavement as their blood covered their attackers.V A woman in labor was jabbed in the abdomen, killing her baby before it was born.
At night, the murderers neared the synagogue. The entryway to the attic there was well hidden. Bandits, headed by Colonel Kurovsky and two others, brought logs and hay and lit the synagogue on fire. Smoke quickly filled the attic and the Jews who were hiding there started to cough and choke. They quickly realized that they would all die and sent a three-man delegation out to save them. Rabbi Simon Rabinovitch, Yosef Kaliches, and a third congregant made a desperate plea and offered all the Jews’ assets in exchange for their lives. The rabbi tried reasoning with Kurovsky,VI a son of Tetiev, but was unsuccessful in his negotiation. The bloodthirsty band of murderers killed the two men who accompanied the rabbi on the spot.
As the temple was engulfed in flames, bandits fought between themselves as to what to do with the rabbi. The forty-three-year-old spiritual leader of thousands began screaming in a crazed state as nearly two thousand of his followers were deliberately smoked out and burned alive in the loft where they were hiding. The rabbi stood near his wooden desk in the shul, reciting psalms by memory to himself—as trouble loomed—until he went mad.
Velvel, a fourteen-year-old boy, along with the rabbi’s seven-year-old daughter, Lena, were among a dozen to miraculously survive the carnage. Velvel bore witness to the last minutes of the heroic rabbi’s life. The rabbi’s daughter most likely heard it, too.
“Leave him as is!” one side argued, as the murderers watched the revered rabbi delve into madness.
“He is their leader: kill him!” others demanded. The killers won out: the esteemed leader of thousands was brutally shot.
After they murdered the rabbi, Velvel escaped the massacre by jumping out of a window as he was chased by bullets. Young Lena feigned death on the floor as one of her father’s killers walked over her tiny body with his leather boots.VII
Few survived; almost everyone was burned alive. The majority who escaped the brutal heat of the flames by jumping out of synagogue windows were viciously shot and stabbed by bandits, who stood outside armed with guns and pitchforks.
Later that year, Barney Stumacher’s group looked around at the devastation in shock. They had heard about the massacre, but nothing prepared them for the sight that met their eyes. The great synagogue in Tetiev was gone, as were those who once worshipped in it. Shortly after the destruction, human remnants were seen scattered in piles about the ruble.
Isaac, whose grandfather Rabbi Meer Caprove knew of the great rabbi who had served Tetiev since his youth in 1895, was well aware of Rabinovitch’s prestigious place among the spiritual leaders of Kiev Guberniya. Rabinovitch’s paternal great-great-grandfather was the righteous Rabbi Gedalia of Linets, author of Teshu’ot ChenVIII; on his maternal side he descended from the brilliant Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Sudikov in Wolyn. The latter claimed marital ties to the noted scholar Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim, one of the most important Hasidic leaders in Russia who wrote the book Degel Machaneh Efraim, a commentary on the Torah.
However, such an impressive rabbinical pedigree could not save the beloved Simon Rabinovitch,IX who in the end suffered the same doomed fate as his wife, and most of their many children who perished in the burning synagogue. His death was reminiscent of another martyred rabbi, Reb Pinchas’l Rabinowitz of Sokolovka Justingrad, whose father, Reb Gedalya Aaron, also hailed from Linets.
Out of about six thousand Jews living in Tetiev, only two thousand survived the massacre that continued for multiple days and encompassed not only the synagogue, but many Jewish houses and establishments around town.X The survivors fled to other cities. The morning after the massacre, Thursday, was a market day. Local peasants assisted the murderers in looting the remaining Jewish homes and businesses, and then loaded the pillaged goods into their wagons. They torched all Jewish properties. Many of the local peasants became concerned only after the fires spread near Tziprivka Street, where their own houses were in danger of burning down. As the Jewish quarter of Tetiev burned, Kurovsky’s vicious gang of hoodlums headed toward Stavishche.
When news of the massacre reached Kiev, a small group of Jewish men rushed to Tetiev—a whole day and night’s journey—with horses and wagons. Shocked at the decimation they found before them, they desperately called out, “Yidden! Yidden!” It was a call that was safe for survivors. A young girl, Ruschel, and her mother came out of hiding by the river; her father was shot and killed days earlier. The Kiev rescuers were shocked to find such little signs of life.
During their very brief layover in Tetiev, Barney’s entourage chose not to drink the water, as rumors spread that for many weeks after the massacre, Jewish corpses filled the wells. It was horrifying to behold the destruction of this once-vibrant Jewish community, and everyone was extremely relieved when it was time to leave the piles of ashes that was once Tetiev. The journey continued, and they hoped to find a surviving synagogue in another town where they could rest for the night.XI
They sought refuge at a synagogue south of Tetiev, along with hundreds of others who were in the same predicament. The accommodations were communal, with no privacy and poor sanitary conditions. The day’s journey had been rigorous, and after finding some chairs and benches to rest on, it didn’t take long for the travelers to fall asleep.
As everyone began dozing, Channa’s seven-year-old cousin, Paul Cutler, suddenly stood up in the room filled with two hundred sleep-deprived Jews and screamed, “Do we have to get up now and run?” It was the sad reality of the times that no child ever expected to sleep peacefully through the night without having to get up and run for his life.
The next day, a few hours into the journey, Barney Stumacher signaled for everyone in the wagon caravans to pull over. Barney’s stop at a small village was intentional: he went in search of the Jewish commissar who had released him from custody a month earlier. In return for his assistance in securing him a railway pass to Fastov, Barney had promised to take the commissar and his daughter with him to America. He intended to keep his end of the bargain.
Shortly afterward, Barney returned alone to his wagon, looking very solemn. He had found the commissar sitting shiva for his daughter, who had recently died during a cholera epidemic.XII The commissar’s dream for his only child to experience freedom and happiness in the Golden Land would never come to fruition. Shattered by the devastating loss of his last family member, the commissar lost any desire to save himself and chose instead to remain in Ukraine.
Throughout the remainder of the journey in Kiev Guberniya, it was expected that bandits would attack at any moment. One did boldly approach the wagon caravans on horseback, brandishing a gun. He wore a smile on his face, making his thoughts transparent: he was going to have a ball with all these Jews, who were known to the peasantry as a group of people who didn’t fight back. The peasants used to say in Russian, “The Jews are like sheep; they let you do what you want with them.” This solo bandit thought that he would get rich by holding up a caravan full of Jews.
Some of the men—among them, Isaac, Avrum, Yunkel, and Itzie—bravely stepped down from their wagons and faced the bandit. They were armed and outnumbered the cocky peasant. Avrum Cutler, the tallest of the men at six feet five inches, stood squarely next to his brother-in-law Isaac, as he threatened the bandit, “It’s either you or us; you can’t possibly kill all of us before one of us kills you.” The bandit sized up his opposition and saw that he had no way out, so he backed off peacefully. For many of the Jewish children sitting on these wagons, it was the first time that they witnessed Jews fighting back and actually winning.
Their travels also took them through southern Kiev Guberniya, and then through Podolia. At times, during blizzard conditions, they “forged across icy rivers and ponds.” It was a tiring and troublesome journey, lasting nearly a week. At one point, Molly was almost lost when she stepped off a wagon and fell through a thin patch of ice into the freezing water. After a lot of pulling by everyone, though, she was finally lifted to safety.
Relief came when the travelers discovered a few abandoned cottages where they could all rest, and where Molly could recuperate. But the relief was short-lived. When Itzie wandered outside in search of food, three Cossacks grabbed him and wanted to shoot him. A recovering Molly, who did not have the stereotypical Jewish appearance, yelled out from an open window, in her perfect Russian, “Spare that man!”
The Cossacks, assuming that Itzie was a Jew who worked for a beautiful Ukrainian lady, backed away and apologized profusely to Molly.
It was a tremendous hardship just to travel through so many of these towns. The caravan would often be stopped and taken to what Rebecca mockingly referred to as a “Confiscate Court.” The so-called authorities in these villages would arrest the refugees by gunpoint, forcing them to abandon their wagons; they’d then be taken to a room inside of an old building, where those in command would attempt to confiscate their valuables. It was understood that in exchange for handing over something of value, the group would be permitted to pass through their town. These were all poor people, and what little they possessed was hidden.
Before leaving Belaya Tserkov, Bessie had refused to take off her wedding band when the women were sewing their jewelry into the linings of their coats. One day, though, Bessie made the decision to take off her ring. She gave it to one of the men at a Confiscate Court who had been eyeing it so that the group would be allowed to pass through. Even Channa, at the tender age of eight, understood how painful it was for Bessie to let go of her wedding band. To the thieves, it was just a ring, valuable only for its gold content, but to Bessie it represented so much more. Her husband and baby were gone, and now she had lost her wedding band, the last physical reminder that she had of her life with her beautiful family in Konela.
When the group rode through a small town in Podolia Guberniya in 1920, they arrived at the tail end of a pogrom just minutes after murderous thugs had vacated the area. The mothers of the caravan, including Rebecca, Molly, and Esther, tried hard to cover their youngest children’s eyes, but they witnessed the carnage anyway. Entire families, including young children, had been slaughtered, and their houses were set on fire. Corpses were lying before them on the barren ground. This was a year after Petliura’s gang was responsible for the greatest loss of Jewish life in Podolia Guberniya. In 1919, the towns of Felshtin and Proskurov suffered catastrophic losses, adding to the many thousands of Jewish victims of the pogroms in Ukraine.
After eight exhausting days, the next formidable, yet welcome, challenge was finally reached: the risky crossing of the Dniester River. Behind them, the shtetls of their homeland were in flames: some literally, others figuratively. Before them were the icy waters of a river that could ultimately lead to freedom. The river was not yet frozen, and each family faced the challenge of making the daring journey across the river on a small rowboat. This was safer than by foot, the mode of transportation used by other Jewish refugees who’d crossed over the winter before. Holding hands, families walked together across the frozen Dniester River to freedom, while some unfortunates fell through the thin ice and were never seen again.
1. I. Twenty years later, with the Holocaust upon Soviet Ukraine’s doorstep, Channa prayed for her mother’s sister Hiya and her family that their Jewish blood would not be remembered.
2. II. See Notes.
3. III. The widespread massacre appeared over a few days, March 24–26, 1920.
4. IV. Source: Committee of Jewish Delegations. “The Pogroms in the Ukraine Under the Ukrainian Governments 1917–1920.” Historical Survey with Documents & Photographs. Bale & Danielsson, London, 1927.
5. V. Committee of Jewish Delegations, page 112.
6. VI. Kurovsky, a former Petliura officer, was placed at the murderous scene with seventeen other bandit leaders by the Committee of Jewish Delegations, in their report, “The Pogroms in the Ukraine Under the Ukrainian Government, 1917–1920,” by five eyewitness testimonies, Annex No. 49. In Annex No. 50, the same committee reported testimony of Ch. Kuperchmiid, stating that Kurovsky and twenty-five former Petliura officers were responsible for the massacre.
7. VII. Source: Lena’s son, Jerry Cutler.
8. VIII. Rabbi Gedalia’s (Gedaliahu ben Rabbi Yitzhak) book Teshu’ot Chen (Teshuot Hen) is an 18th-century commentary on the Torah. Teshu’ot Chen (Teshuot Hen) means “applause; shouting of grace.” The het-nun is also the abbreviation of Hochmat ha’Nistar, which is another name for Kabbalah. The rabbi was a Hassidic Kabbalist.
9. IX. In an obituary of one of the rabbi’s grandsons in America, the family’s surname is spelled Rubinowitz.
10. X. These numbers are guesstimates from survivor testimonies (see Notes).
11. XI. Although Barney’s group did not pass through the nearby village of Pogrebishche, nineteen miles north-northwest of Tetiev, they later heard of the devastation that had hit there more than a year earlier, in August 1919. The Jewish dead in that attack numbered four hundred; half the victims were defenseless women. During the pogrom, two hundred unfortunate Jewish women took refuge in an open park where, without mercy, they were ruthlessly attacked with knives and sabres by Zeleny’s troops. Less than one month earlier, Rabbi Pitsie Avram had courageously saved Stavishche from Zeleny’s fury, but the Jewish populations of both Pogrebishche and Sokolovka Justingrad were subsequently massacred.
12. XII. Some family members believe that the commissar had hoped to marry off his pretty daughter to Barney.