Capitalism in Decay

As a summer Sunday evening turned into night, a group of five to seven assailants, possibly intoxicated, armed themselves with improvised weapons—truncheons, shovels, metal rods, axes, and boards spiked with nails.⁵⁹ In the glow of what one survivor remembered as a “bright night,” the group then headed on foot toward Tuchyn’s main Jewish neighborhood.⁶⁰

Passing by the ransacked businesses in the main square, the assailants reached the Jewish neighborhood, where they “began to kill everyone they could get their hands on.”⁶¹ A young mother, Teivel Sapoznik, was murdered in front of her infant son.⁶² The fortunate were those who had time to hide, like nineteen‐year‐old Ester Vaksman who hid in her home, or the Portnoy family who hid behind a recently built false basement.⁶³ The Portnoys heard the intruders upstairs, but the only damage was broken furniture and a stolen sewing machine.⁶⁴

As the assailants moved through the neighborhood, the Emmett (Chomut) family—Isaak, Pearl, and their two daughters, Hannah and Laura—waited in terror in their newly built home on Voskodavska Street. Assuming the attackers would only be interested in men, Isaak decided to hide in the garden with the husband of their tenant; he later wrote, “I can never forgive myself for making this error.”⁶⁵

He instructed his wife to say he was at work and give the intruders anything they wanted. From their window, the daughters and their mother watched the group pass their home. Pearl sighed, “Oh, thank God,” believing that they had escaped the worst; however, one member looked over at the house and motioned, “What about here?”

The group pounded on the door, and when Pearl answered it, they demanded to know where Isaak was. When Pearl told them he was away at work, the attackers began to beat her with a metal rod, cracking open her skull.⁶⁶ Laura recalled the horrific scene: “I’ll never forget the sound it made when the blood was coming out of her head zhhhhhhh and then she stopped screaming, so they kicked her and they said, ‘She’s finished, let’s go [khody] into the house.’ So, my sister pulled me away from the doorstep. And that’s all I know.”⁶⁷

Isaak would later say of the attackers beating Pearl, “They did not stop beating her until she became quiet, and they thought she was dead.”⁶⁸

The assailants entered the home and first attacked the tenant and her one‐year‐old daughter. They then entered the room where the girls were hiding and beat seven‐year‐old Laura until she was unconscious. Ten‐year‐old Hannah, miraculously, remained hidden and would emerge from the ordeal physically unscathed. Once the attackers appeared to have left, Isaak returned to his home, which he described as a “slaughterhouse.” He later recalled:

My dear wife was lying at the doorway in a puddle of blood and unconscious. I started screaming and tried to bring her inside. I did not notice that the murderers had not gotten far enough away. One of them saw me and came back and beat me in the face. My face swelled up from the beating, but I did not feel the pain because I was trying to save my wife. She was all swollen and blood was coming from her entire body and particularly the head. There was no way to bring the doctor. The murderers were still wandering the streets…⁶⁹

Blood covered the home—the cushions and pillows were soaked in the blood of the women who endured the attack. The tenant was lying face down on the floor of the room where she lived and appeared to be dead. The [anticommunists] had murdered her child.⁷⁰

Isaak ran out for help, and his brother‐in‐law Friedel helped him to bandage up his wife, who had six holes in her head and a broken nose and could not see out of her left eye. He soon realized that Laura was missing. After some time of searching, they found her under a bed in another room. Laura was unable to stand, her head was “soft as dough,” and her face was so swollen, they could not see her eyes. Laura was paralyzed on her right side and was suffering from a blood clot around her brain.⁷¹

As the sun poured its light over the Jewish neighborhood the next morning, the community began to account for the “night of terror.”⁷² Isaak recalled the scene: “Outside I saw the destruction of the night of terror. On the street there were still dead bodies. From the houses, you could still hear the screaming.”⁷³

Feigi Gluss remembered waking up and learning that “half of our town was dead… People were in such a shape. It was terrible to even talk to one another.”⁷⁴ Like many, Feigi learned of the pogrom from the screams across the neighborhood and the sight of the mutilated bodies, with eyes gouged out, tongues cut out, and bodies hacked to death, as a wagon came through town to pick them up.⁷⁵

For those still alive but wounded, medical care was a priority. Because there was no Jewish doctor in town, the community turned to the head local doctor, Vasyl Humeniuk, [an anticommunist] and, as already mentioned, someone connected to the uprava. Those like Iosif Zaltsman brought wounded people to the hospital to be treated.⁷⁶

These bandaged and bleeding victims pleaded for help, to which Humeniuk reportedly responded, “We will not provide any medical assistance to the Jews since you all will be killed soon enough.”⁷⁷ Luckily, a local Polish doctor, Bortnowski, was willing to treat the Jews, despite threats from his colleague Humeniuk, and, together with a Russian nurse, he helped Isaak’s family and others.⁷⁸

By the end of Monday, July 7, the dead numbered at least twenty‐five, with dozens more wounded.⁷⁹ Among the causalities were people from the following families: Agers, Chisda, Zavodnik, Sherel, Gitelman, Halperin, Katzman, Sapoznik, Feldman, Fridman, and others.⁸⁰

As the community reeled from the night of terror, the local village administration, under the authority of Shcherbaniuk, came to the Jewish leadership with instructions, which Isaak recounted: “They ordered us to clean the streets and bury all the victims within two hours. They also warned us not to talk about what we had experienced and seen.”⁸¹ The Jewish community had to hastily bury their dead in a common grave in the local cemetery under threat of more violence.

[…]

In one exchange with a Jewish resident of Tuchyn in the summer of 1941, Hrytsak taunted him, “Death to all Jews; death to Poles [liakhy], death to Russians [Moskali], and Stalin,” and exclaimed that Stalin himself was a Jew.¹⁰⁰

In a more revealing exchange with a fellow Ukrainian, explaining in 1944 why he was hiding from the Soviets, Hrytsak remarked, “You understand what the Soviets will do to people who helped the Germans destroy the Jews.” He added, “In general, I’m not worried, but I’m concerned about what will happen to me [for my actions] related to the Jews.”¹⁰¹ Hrytsak died in the gulag in 1951.

(Emphasis added.)