By David Solly Sandler
WANNEROO, WESTERN AUSTRALIA — A century ago, on 16 December 1920 a detailed report on the Pogroms in the Ukraine, a Memorandum on the Massacres of Jews in the Ukraine, was submitted to the League of Nations (now The United Nations) detailing the massacre of Jews in more than 400 pogroms.
The memorandum was submitted by The Committee of Jewish Delegations, representing the Jewish populations of 22 countries, appealing to the League of Nations to obtain justice for the most terrible crimes that history had, until that time, ever witnessed,
It included a September 1919 report of the Red Cross Society at Kiev stating that more than 30,000 Jews have been murdered. Since that date the number of murders had increased alarmingly. Jewish representatives, from the Ukraine, unanimously declare that the number of Jews massacred far exceeded a hundred thousand.
It reported that “up to the present more than a million Jews have been robbed and many of them have had literally their last shirt taken from them. The most refined tortures have been devised. Old men and children have been cut to pieces. Thousands of women and young girls have been outraged, and among these even little girls and old women. The victims have been terribly mutilated; the right arm and left leg have been cut off, or vice versa, the left arm and right leg; one eye has been torn out and the nose cut off. The houses in which the Jews took refuge were burnt, and all perished in the flames. The number of cases in which these unhappy victims were doomed to die a slow death of indescribable torture cannot be counted. Burning was the usual practice.
“Besides physical torture, they were subjected to mental torture of a kind for which there is no parallel in history. Jews were compelled to dance and to sing in the presence of their torturers, to mock their own people and to praise their executioners; they had to dig their own graves and to commit shameful acts for the amusement of their murderers. These wretched people were forced to look on at the dishonoring of their daughters and of their wives, and children were compelled to hang their fathers.”
In January 1921 the then British Chief Rabbi, Dr Joseph Hertz, had declared “1,000,000 human beings had been butchered and that for three years 3,000,000 persons in the Ukraine had been made ‘to pass through the horrors of hell’ and there were some 600,000 homeless children, 150,000 orphans and 35,000 double orphans in the Ukraine who would die from cold, hunger, or disease unless Jewish hearts remained human and came to their rescue.” News of these pogroms shocked Jews around the world and galvanized them into action: to raise funds and save their brethren. Sadly, there is no memorial day to remember these events nor are there contemporary efforts to teach this history.
This article attempts to do so and tells of this forgotten part of Jewish History; a period completely overshadowed by the Holocaust; the horrors of war and pogroms and starvation and disease suffered by Jews in the „Pale of Settlement‟ from 1914 to 1922.
Noted are the horrors and the help given to these desperate people by Jewish communities established in the USA, Canada, Palestine and South Africa. Much of the details were covered up by the Soviets and are unknown and so capturing this history is important. Sadly it was followed by The Holocaust twenty years later.
The pogroms in the Ukraine perpetrated mainly by the soldiers of Ukrainian leader Symon Petlura were in fact only part of the horrors. This is apparent when one looks at the causes of death of the parents of the orphans that were saved and transported to South Africa. The horrors commenced in 1914 with WWI with the forced relocation into Russia of Lithuanian and Latvian Jews by the Russian Tzar‟s uncle.
In the fighting between the Germans and Russians many townsfolk were killed and left homeless as frontline towns were attacked and destroyed. Jews fought in both the German and Russian armies. WWI was followed by the 1917 Russian Revolution; the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, The Polish fight for independence; Wholesale Pogroms perpetrated by the troops of White Russian General Anton Denikin, Ukrainian “hero‟ Symon Petlura and Belarusian short time president Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz; 1921 Man-made famine in the Ukraine and hunger and starvation and diseases.
Finally, complete chaos, devastation, crop failure, starvation and the diseases that accompany hunger and cold, added to the extremely harsh living conditions that continued well into the 1920s.
*
Jewish communities around the world were shocked by the news of the horrors of war and the pogroms, starvation and disease suffered by their Jewish relatives in the Pale of Settlement. Especially horrific, were accounts of wholesale rape, extortion and slaughter of their brethren by Polish, Ukrainian and Belarus nationalistic armies and the Red and White (Cossack) Russian troops.
The Jewish communities around the world heard the cries of their brethren whom they helped in many ways. – The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) entered into an agreement with the American Relief Administration and with their feeding programs fed almost two million Ukrainians on a non-sectarian basis.
The JDC also supported many Jewish communities in the Pale.
Canada rescued 150 orphans, mainly from the Rovno area. They examined over 8,000 to find healthy ones that were transported to Toronto for adoption.
South Africa sent funds and supplies to Poland and the Ukraine, transported children to Kfar Yeladim in Israel and supported them there. They also rescued the 177 orphans, collecting them mainly from orphanages supported by the JDC.
*
After being orphaned in 1956 at the age of four, Sandler was raised in Arcadia, the South African Jewish Orphanage in Johannesburg, where he remained for 13 years. He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1976, married in 1979, and migrated to Perth, Australia, in 1981, now residing in the suburb of Wanneroo. He is the father of two daughters. Sandler may be contacted via sedsand@iinet.net.au