CHAPTER SIX
It was on a market day, sometime during the early days of the Revolution, when violence invaded the peaceful townlet. Five-year-old Channa heard a commotion coming from outside of her father’s shoe shop. She watched through a window as peasants, carrying large flags, jubilantly marched through the streets singing patriotic songs. They were drunk, looting, and very boisterous. It was like watching a play. Even as a child, Channa couldn’t understand how they could act that way—and why? She learned soon enough.
As the mobs passed, more and more peasants were spurred on to join them. Channa looked on as the maid, Sophia, who lived with the family, dropped what she was doing and ran out to join the crowd.
The young girl was curious and wandered after her, following the mob as they marched to the end of the town where the count’s heirs, his staff, and other minor aristocrats lived. The unruly peasants were bent on looting the rich. They attacked the graf’sI estate, as well as those of the other surrounding nobles, and robbed them of their valuables. The peasants went wild ransacking the grand palace. Channa looked on as dozens of peasants ran past her, cradling priceless pieces of china, silver, statues, bedding, and draperies. Men lifted up and carried away elegant pieces of furniture. They pillaged paintings from the art galleries that connected the two side wings to the main house of the grand estate.II Bronzes, portraits, eastern-style carpets, marble figurines and statues, and exquisite pieces of furniture were among the many treasures looted by the peasantry.
They stripped the estate of its treasures before setting fire to parts of the Branicki family’s magnificent horseshoe-shaped palace. Clouds of black smoke hovered in the sky and could be seen from every corner of town. Channa became afraid—she was trapped in the crowd as people ran in all directions after the fire began.III
From a distance, she spotted her seven-year-old neighbor Rose Lechtzer. A peasant farmer passed by Rose, dragging a very large mirror through the muddy streets of the shtetl. He had stolen it from the castle that was inherited by Count Branicki’s third daughter, the last heiress of Stavishche, Countess Julia Wladyslawowna Potocka.IV When he found that it was too large to fit through the doorway of his small house, he stuck it instead in his barn, where his nervous cow caught a glimpse of her own image for the first time. Stories circulated for days around town that for his trouble, this peasant farmer ended up “with a shattered mirror and a bleeding cow!”V
Channa was relieved when her father found her in the mob and carried her home to safety. She soon learned that her parents and the Jews in Stavishche did not share in the jubilation of the enraged peasants. Over the years, the poor Christian masses had become increasingly resentful of the Branicki family’s growing fortune, while the Jews, who, like Isaac, tended to be more prosperous than their Gentile neighbors, accepted their wealth as a matter of fact.
Rebecca and Isaac were particularly distraught. They had grown to trust, and even respect, many of the nobles, who often patronized Isaac’s business, and were deeply saddened by this latest turn of events. Despite their sympathy for the Count’s family, the couple felt impotent in the face of such brutal violence. It would not be long, they predicted, before this uncontrollable peasant mob would turn their misguided rage in another direction: the Jews of the town would no doubt be the next victims of looting and deadly acts of violence.
Channa watched her mother’s reaction when their peasant maid Sophia returned to the house. Sophia brought back a sack filled with beautiful items that she had stolen from the countess’s estate during the raids. When she shamelessly began to show off her new possessions that she robbed from Branicki Palace, Rebecca screamed at the top of her lungs for Sophia to leave her home.
They never saw the maid again.
In the aftermath of the revolt, Rebecca and Isaac took a walk to inspect the grounds of the once grand estate. Channa and Sunny, who had just learned how to walk, followed them to the site. Tears quickly filled all their eyes. Fire compromised the palatial dwelling.VI The young family solemnly gathered by a small section of the foundation of the building, obscured by massive heaps of rubble and ashes. Smoking embers flickered throughout the air. The fire set by the hands of the insurgent peasant mob had spread mercilessly to the count’s vast botanical gardens, leaving little trace of greenery or life in its path.
The main building, imposing in size but not uniform in height, had been looted and charred by fire. Gone was the beauty of its lavish landscaped park and vast botanical gardens that Count Alexander Branicki, the current Count Wladyslaw’s father, had commissioned back in 1857.VII The hothouse that stood on the right wing of the palace where tropical plants were stored during the winter months was destroyed. Gone were the exotic plants and colorful flowers that the Jewish children in Stavishche enjoyed picking and arranging as bouquets for their mothers’ Sabbath tables.
The spectacular gardens were gone. Just months earlier, in the spring, Channa had gathered, for the last time, a lovely bunch of lilacs from the count’s estate. At the Jewish cemetery with her grieving mother by her side, she leaned down and spread their opulent trusses across her grandmother’s fresh grave. The sensitive little girl hoped that their heavy scent, a favorite of her bubbe’s, would reach Fay in heaven.
Channa searched for the exotic birds—mostly peacocks with colorful feathers—that had promenaded around the gardens.VIII She could not find any sign of them. Isaac walked over to the partially blackened low brick wall that encompassed the grounds of the Holy Trinity, the Catholic Church. The church had always been easily accessible to the townspeople with a gate that opened from the walkway on the main thoroughfare. The small courtyard opposite that gate, which earlier in the week was filled with pine trees, had burned.
Two of the properties surrounding the other side of the manor to survive the attack were the dwellings of the steward and one of the three doctors in town. Count Branicki’s Free Hospital for the Poor, which was located nearby on a small hill by a structure that housed a peculiar-looking water pump, also survived the rampage.
The family somberly left the still smoldering grounds and returned to their humble quarters near the Stavishcha Inn. Behind them stood the ruins of a palace that once captured the imagination of the count’s subjects with fascinating tales and stories of great splendor.
Stavishche’s Last Count: Wladyslaw Branicki
Wladyslaw was the great-grandson of Stavishche’s first count, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, and his beautiful young wife, Aleksandra Engelhardt, who was rumored to be the secret daughter of Catherine the Great of Russia.IX After the death of his father, Alexander, in 1877, Count Wladyslaw Branicki inherited the vast estate and its riches.X The nobleman, who was often described as shy and unassuming,XI was concerned about the welfare of widows and orphans, and frequently supported them anonymously through intermediaries. Branicki devoted his life to various charities.
Count Wladyslaw Branicki was a man of merit who cared deeply about people, including the Jews of his village whom he offered, along with the local Christian population, free medical care. Many Jews in Stavishche believed he had considerable influence in the court of the tsar, where he was supportive of the Jewish community.XII
In the winter of 1887, a Hebrew language newspaper, Hazefirah, openly praised Count Branicki’s generosity to the town’s poor. When a great number of residents were starving, he contributed one hundred silver rubles for food and gifted free wood to heat their homes. He also donated an additional one thousand silver rubles for those who suffered losses during fires in Stavishche. The same newspaper specifically thanked Count Branicki and publicly proclaimed: “May he be rewarded in full.”XIII
To the Polish people in his employ, who formed an interesting community around him, as well as to the locals, Count Branicki was a very popular lord and the subject of many tales. A young Polish poet, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, who visited the estate, wrote that like Casimir the Great, Count Branicki often visited those on his properties dressed in a simple outfit and traveling in an ordinary-looking wagon. He enjoyed taking part in the daily lives of the peasants and often acted as godfather in children’s christenings.
All of his properties were well-manicured with flower gardens and plush greenery. The perfumed aroma of the count’s lilac bushes mingled with the scent of pine trees that surrounded the castle, and many locals were drawn to the estate to inhale the fresh air.
On one of Wladyslaw’s many trips abroad, he purchased a drilling machine that he sent back to Stavishche. A well was dug near his palace that provided the townsfolk with both a drink of ice-cold water and a beautiful gathering place near the gardens to share stories of the mysterious nobleman.XIV
The fabricated tales that circulated had many of the Jewish children in town believing that he was a famous Russian general from the royal family. In reality, Count Branicki was a Polish magnate whose ancestors retained ownership of the land, despite Russia’s annexation of Ukraine in 1793.
On the opposite side of town, down the hill, past the pond on the way to the nearby shtetl of Zhashkov, was Count Branicki’s dense pine forest. Under the century-old pine trees that margined Stavishche’s border, youngsters played hide-and-seek while inhaling woodsy smells and feeling the wet earth beneath their toes. Young Jewish children, including Channa and her sister, Sunny, her neighbor Rose, and her cousins, watched and listened as Christian peasant boys sang Ukrainian folk songs while herding goats and performing their daily chores.
The Count’s Arabian Stallion
The local townsfolk, socializing at the well, often told tales of the Branicki family’s love of Arabian horses, which were, at that time, rare in Europe. Stavishche, though, was famous for its horses. Arabians adorned the estate of the count, who set up stables for his twenty thoroughbreds and three dozen saddle and harness horses. One of the biggest pleasures of those who lived on the Branicki estate was the morning horseback rides on the most beautiful of stallions.
The father of A. Ben-Hayim of Stavishche, who was known to spin tales about Count Wladyslaw Branicki, recalled the noble’s much-talked-about purchase of an Arabian horse while traveling abroad. Rebecca told a similar tale of the count’s purchase from Cairo; Isaac thought it was Damascus.XV Branicki decided to have his new prized possession sent back to his estate in Stavishche. Apparently, Wladyslaw spared no expense in sending his horse and its trainer by ship in first-class accommodations.
Although pampered, Count Branicki’s new Arabian horse had difficulty adjusting to its new environment in Stavishche. Against the trainer’s advice, Count Branicki decided to saddle his prized Arabian and parade it around town. As word spread that the count would be making an appearance on horseback, the people of Stavishche, who usually waited for the wind to carry away the dirt and the dust, took out their brooms and swept the streets in anticipation of his arrival. Nobles, Jews, and peasants then gathered together and watched and waved with admiration as the kind Polish magnate rode his prized new horse around Stavishche. Men, women, and children ran out into the street and watched with the crowd as Count Branicki proudly paraded his favorite stallion.
The count traveled to the outskirts of town, but when he returned to the gates of Stavishche, the horse had had enough. Before the eyes of the entire village, the noble’s priceless Arabian, with Count Branicki proudly saddled on top of him, collapsed and died.
Arabian horses were not the count’s only passion—he was the proud owner of the first automobile in the town. During one of his last visits to his estate just before his death, Count Branicki had his chauffeur drive him around town in his fancy new car, probably imported from America.
“Look at that—no horses, nothing!”XVI exclaimed little Benny Golditch, the son of Shika de Potch, who, in 1913, captured the excitement of the people as they gathered for their first glimpse of an automobile. The townsfolk rushed to the streets to witness the miracle. A Jewish girl from Stavishche was so enamored with Count Branicki’s automobile that she caused a scandal when she ran away with the graf’s driver just before the onset of the First World War.
Count Wladyslaw Branicki, one of the last members of the Polish border gentry, died in April 1914. At the time of his passing, the nobleman owned more than seven thousand acres of land in Tarashcha District, where Stavishche is located. He also held title to both the brewery and the seventy-four-year-old vineyard in the town. Many of his grandchildren later told their children that the nobleman loved Stavishche and its environs so much, that the events that followed his death three years later in 1917 would have been a great affliction for him.XVII