Arise and go now to the city of slaughter — Chaim Nachman Bialik, “In the City of Slaughter”
By Alex Gordon
HAIFA, Israel — My stepfather’s father, Faivel (Falik) Deigen received a degree in engineering from the Polytechnic Institute in Toulouse. He liked to recall his years of study in France, his youth. He read the only newspaper published in French in the USSR, l’Humanité, the newspaper of the French Communist Party. I often bought it for him.
It was as biased as the Soviet newspapers, but Falik had a sentiment for all things French. He loved this unsympathetic paper for its crossword puzzles, jokes, advertisements, and reports of events in Paris. These reports reminded him of the names of the streets and squares he had walked in his youth. He often spoke French at home; he loved the language, its tune. However, his strongest impressions during his studies in France were, in my opinion, related to Russia, which was on the verge of revolution.
These were the years before the World War I. Paris was the center of demonstrations and meetings of all Russian revolutionary parties. Going to a demonstration and listening to the speakers and the reactions of those gathered to the speeches was a way to learn about what was happening in Russia. Falik was then about 20 years old, and he enjoyed listening to the speeches of the leaders of the future revolution. The orators were brilliant and competed with one another.
Once he listened to Lev Trotsky and was stunned by his speech. He was a handsome man just over 30, with lush dark hair, blue eyes, and correct facial features. On Trotsky, everything was clear – who was to blame, what to do and how to do it. After the speech, there was great applause. The revolutionaries loved Trotsky, carried him in their arms.
Falik was excited by the speech, and when the crowd began to disperse, was under the strong impression of what he had heard. He was walking toward the streetcar stop when he noticed a balding man of short stature, about 40 years old, walking quickly beside him. “Did you like Trotsky’s speech, comrade?” – the man asked in Russian. Falik nodded affirmatively. “He is a talker and a dangerous man! He will shed a lot of blood. I can already see the blood on his hands!” –said the interlocutor. Falik was astonished: the whole crowd adored Trotsky, and only this man criticized him so sharply. “Are there bloodless revolutions?” – he asked. “Do you really want to know how a revolution should be made? If so, come to this address tonight.”– “Whom shall I ask there?” – asked Falik. “Me, my name is Ulyanov-Lenin Vladimir Ilyich.”
Falik, who met the leaders of the Russian Revolution, almost became one of the victims of the Ukrainian Revolution, led by the Social Democrats of the Directory, the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR).
One of the leading revolutionaries was a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian and then Ukrainian Social Democratic Party, Simon Petliura. After the dissolution of the Central Rada (the All-Ukrainian council that united deputies of soldiers, workers, and peasants as well as few members of political, public, cultural and professional organizations of the UPR), Petliura was a member of the Directory.
This government was also supported by some Jews. Falik did not belong to them and feared revolutions. In his opinion, Jews should not participate in any revolution. He was not a counter-revolutionary, he was an anti-revolutionary, following Zeev Jabotinsky: no involvement in foreign, non-Jewish affairs, no foreign revolutions. – “We [Zionists] refuse any claim to the creation of another’s history. The field of our creativity is within Jewry.”
In 1918, victorious for the Ukrainian Revolution, Falik’s son was born in Proskurov. He would become my stepfather Michael Deigen, later a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, professor, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Eight months after my stepfather’s birth, on February 15, 1919, in Proskurov, on the main Aleksandrovskaya street of the city, the largest Jewish pogrom occurred: 1650 people were killed. The pogrom lasted from 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The Petliurovites killed the Jews with shouts of “For Ukraine! For Petliura!” Petliura was then chairman of the Directory (prime minister) and supreme ataman (defense minister) of the UPR. The Deigen family escaped, but the shadow of the pogrom loomed over Falik again seven years later. It came from the country of his youth, France. In 1926, Falik met in Proskurov with the assistant of French lawyer Henri Torres. Who was Torres, and why had he sent his assistant from Paris to a Ukrainian provincial town?
On May 25, 1926, in Rue Racine in Paris, the 47-year-old Petliura was approached by the 40-year-old owner of a watch repair store, Sholom Schwarzbard, and asked in Ukrainian: “Are you Mr. Petliura? Defend yourself! You’re a bandit!” Petliura raised his cane with his right hand. Schwarzbard shout out three times, “This is for pogroms, for murders, for victims!” Schwarzbard lost his parents and 13 family members in the Proskurov pogrom. Petliura was killed, and the murderer was arrested. A trial began.
Torres was Schwarzbard’s defense attorney. He sent his assistant Bernard Lecache to the scene to gather testimony. Lecache was the son of Jewish descendants from Russia and a writer, author of Au pays des pogroms (In the Land of Pogroms, 1927). Falik was in Proskurov at the time of the pogroms and knew French. He assisted Lecache in collecting testimony. (In 1942, Lecache was deprived of French citizenship by the Vichy government. He was a member of the French Resistance under the name Captain Lecache and received the “Medal of Resistance,” the Order of the Military Cross and the Chevalier de légion d’honneur.)
Torres’ line of defense was simple: the assassin was taking revenge for the destruction of his family. Torres needed facts about the pogrom. Falik walked with Lecache along the main Alexandrovskaya Street and helped him take statements from the relatives of the victims.
Confessing to the murder, Schwarzbard claimed: “I killed the murderer.” The French court agreed with the arguments of the defense: the accused wanted to avenge his parents and the victims of the Petliura pogroms in Ukraine. Schwarzbard was acquitted and released on October 26, 1927.
On October 11, 1927, a week before the trial of Petliura’s murderer, Jabotinsky, who was living in Paris at the time, put the following statement in the Russian-language Parisian newspaper Latest News: “Petliura was head of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian army for two years or more; for almost all this time pogroms continued; the head of the government and army did not suppress them, did not punish the guilty and did not resign himself. So, he took responsibility for every drop of Jewish blood spilled. This is so clear that there are no excuses. This is not only my idea of the duty and responsibility of the head of the government and the army, but that of every literate person.”
In his closing remarks, lawyer Torres said: “It is not a question of making a national hero out of Schwarzbard. I do not demand that this man be glorified, pushed by an unrelenting obsession to murder the executioner of his brothers. Schwarzbard is no hero. But if Schwarzbard is not a national hero, then even less can we call Petliura a national hero. This Petliura will go down in history with the stigma of the terrible crimes that were committed under his rule in Ukraine. For these crimes Petliura undoubtedly bears full responsibility. Schwarzbard was in Ukraine where he observed horrific scenes. In one town, the Petliura ataman Kozyr-Zyrka carried out a gruesome pogrom. They tortured victims of the pogrom, stripped women, insulted elders and trembling children were ordered by the bandits to shout, ‘Glory to Ataman Kozyr-Zyrka.’ And then they were slowly murdered. Jewish mothers in Ukraine would say to their children, ‘Goodbye, Petliura is coming!’ We know that to convict Schwarzbard for even one day in prison is to justify all the pogroms, all the looting, all the blood spilled by the pogromists in Ukraine, all the murders. Today, here in the city of the Great French Revolution, it is not Schwarzbard who is being tried, it is the pogroms that are being tried. This is about the prestige of France and about millions of human lives. If you want to prevent any pogroms in the future, Schwarzbard must be acquitted. To condemn Schwarzbard is to justify pogroms! […] I am proud to defend Schwarzbard, who killed the murderer. Here in France is a person often mentioned and guilty of pogroms – it is Denikin. If Denikin’s murderer were sitting in the dock, I would defend him as ardently as I defended Petliura’s murderer.”
The claim that Schwarzbard was a Soviet agent, considered obvious in Ukrainian history, was also discussed in Paris. Prosecution witness Vasily Shulgin, a member of the Union of the Russian People and the Mikhail Archangel Russian People’s Union, testified that Schwarzbard killed Petliura “by order of Moscow.” Shulgin stated that Schwarzbard was mistakenly considered an idealist and an avenger for the Jews. This, according to Shulgin, is nonsense, for he is simply an agent of the Cheka (the Extraordinary Commission, the first secret service in Soviet Russia), not even a major one. Torres further demanded proof that Schwarzbard was a Bolshevik or a Cheka agent. Shulgin: “I have no proof, I am simply convinced of it.”
Bernard Lecache published his own investigation. There was such an episode. In the spring of 1919, a deputation of Jews from Zhitomir and Berdychiv “respectfully asked to stop the pogroms” arrived at Petliura’s headquarters. They were immediately arrested and locked up for two or three days. When the petitioners were released and they were able to file their complaint, they were told to say on behalf of the “head ataman”: “The people you are complaining about are the pride of Ukraine!” Soon a second deputation came to the aid of the first. They succeeded in obtaining an audience with Petliura, who, after listening to them, briefly responded: “Don’t quarrel with my army!” When once again a delegation of Jews at the Mamienka station broke through to him with a plea to stop the pogrom, the head of the UPR said, “Look, I don’t interfere in what my army does, and I can’t stop them from doing what they think they should do!”
Nikolai Poletika, a journalist, a Kievan, a Ukrainian, a contemporary of and witness to the pogroms in Kiev, wrote in his memoirs: “Ukraine is the historical home of the Jewish pogroms. The three waves were essentially Ukrainian: 1648 – Khmelnitsky’s Cossacks (120–150 thousand Jews killed, according to some data – 250 thousand), 1768 haidamaks (30–40 thousand Jews killed, according to some data – 50–60 thousand), 1919 – ‘free Cossacks’, ‘haidamaks’ and Petliura’s ‘shooters’ (according to the Red Cross Commission, Petliura fighters killed about 50 thousand Jews, according to some data – about 100 thousand; in total, during the Civil War about 200 thousand Jews were killed; in 1919 Petliura’s troops carried out about 1,000 pogroms, Denikin’s – about 200, Reds – about 100).
Poletika recalled: “Especially terrible Jewish pogroms and massacres of Jews were carried out by the ‘Free Cossacks,’ the ‘Shooters’ and the ‘Haidamaks’ of the Ukrainian Rada and the Directory, gangs of Ukrainian ‘atamans,’ and officer regiments of Denikin. […] The Rada’s journey from Zhitomir to Kiev [January–February 1918] was marked by a wave of Jewish pogroms. On February 3, at the train station in Borodyanka [near Kiev], a delegation of local Jews appealed to Petliura for protection. Petliura replied that he had no time to deal with the matter… The Kiev City Duma sent a delegation of representatives of Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish socialist parties to meet the Rada and its troops. The task of the delegation was to ask the returning troops, whose pogrom moods were already known in Kiev, not to allow, or rather to refrain from Jewish pogroms in the Ukrainian capital. […]
“The delegation was met by soldiers and officers, […] with what is called a hostility: ‘Half the city (Kiev), all the Jews must be slaughtered. […] All three million Jews must be kicked out of Ukraine.’ Shocked by such sentiments of the Ukrainian troops, the delegation appealed to Petliura to prevent pogroms and bloodbaths in Kiev. Petliura replied that ‘he could not guarantee anything; the soldiers’ sentiments are known to him, but he sees here a thirst for revenge, and not antisemitism. […] A wave of violence, looting and pogroms in February–April 1918 swept across Ukraine. […]
“After leaving Kiev, Petliura’s troops continued to engage in pogroms [beginning in February 1919]. They were terrible in their cruelty in February and March pogroms. […] We, the proofreaders at Kulzhenko’s printing shop, were well aware of these pogroms, as both Soviet and volunteer [Denikin’s]newspapers willingly printed stories of fugitives about the pogroms in the province.”
Among the fugitives were my grandmother and grandfather, who fled to Kiev from Korosten with two young daughters, one of whom was my mother in spring 1919. About a month before my mother’s birth, on February 17, 1918 in Korosten, where she was born on March 15, there was a Jewish pogrom. My grandmother, pregnant with my mother, was hiding with neighbors. On March 31, 1919, the Petliura’s and Central Rada troops carried out a large pogrom in Korosten. The family fled to Kiev, where Jews could already live after the 1917 abolition of the Pale of Settlement by the Provisional Government.
However, the hope of salvation in Kiev proved to be fragile: pogroms took place there as well. Power in the city changed hands 12 times, pogroms were a constant ingredient of the bloodbath of the Ukrainian Civil War, the modus operandi of all the Kiev authorities toward the Jews. Six years before my mother moved to Kiev, my father was born in that city. My parents’ families were caught up in the Kiev pogroms.
In May 2005, the newly elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, signed decree 793 on the immortalization of the memory of Petliura and his associates: renaming streets and avenues of Ukrainian cities after them, installing monuments, assigning their names to military units, popularizing and studying in schools and universities the “military and state activities” of the UPR, holding celebrations, scientific conferences, shooting films, producing commemorative coins and much more.
In 2006, Yushchenko created the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory in Kiev: in a short time, it was necessary to form and “mint” a new nation, and put history in order. The institute had to “advertise” the positive aspects of Ukrainian history. For this purpose, the Institute of Memory had to act as an institute of oblivion, designed to remove the murders of Poles and Jewish pogroms from Ukrainian history, to legitimize national amnesia, to create a new image of Petliura, to put a laurel wreath on him, and to make a halo of the main hero of the struggle for Ukrainian independence around his head.
On June 30, 2016, Ivan Patrilyak, doctor of history, professor, dean of the history faculty at Kiev University, told this correspondent his version of the massacre of Jews: “Jewish pogroms in Ukraine were, if I may say so, traditional, in this difficult relationship between the local population and the Jews. It was something traditional. The Nazis wanted to bring something non-traditional into it: a racially motivated extermination. This had not been practiced here before. If we talk about the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), the OUN program did not contain a clause about the extermination of the Jews as a racial group. In the resolution of the OUN it was said that the Jews are the main support of Bolshevism and as the main support of Bolshevism the OUN is fighting the Jews. But at the same time the OUN informs the masses that the main enemy of the Ukrainians is Moscow Bolshevism, not the Jews. The OUN did not demand, as the Nazis did, the extermination of all Jews. It was more of a political antisemitism, rather than a racial one, like the Nazis.”
In April 1941 the II Great Congress of the OUN was held in Rome, with the following resolution: “The Jews in the USSR are the most faithful support of the Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Moscow’s imperialism in the Ukraine. […] The OUN fights the Jews as a support of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime, explaining to the masses at the same time that Moscow is the main enemy.”
In May 1941 the OUN developed a new plan for the uprising – the instruction Struggle and Activity of the OUN during the War. There was a call: “Ukraine for the Ukrainians! […] Death to the Moscow-Judean Commune! Beat the Commune, save Ukraine! […] Kill the enemies who are among you – the kikes and sexots (secret officers, that is, informants of secret services)!” These slogans sounded like a death sentence to the Jews. It contained a generalization unnoticed by the author – all Jews were the mainstay of Bolshevism. A nationalist movement against “historical exploiters” spread in Civil War Ukraine, among which the Jews occupied a major place. They were perceived there as outsiders, rootless, alien and hostile people who prevented Ukrainians from living. Antisemitism in Ukraine most likely referred to all kinds – economic (robbery), political, religious and racial.
In January 2019, a memorial plaque to Petliura was unveiled in the center of Kiev, in the presence of government representatives. The bas-relief was installed on the wall of the house on Simon Petliura Street, 2/4, at the intersection of Petliura Street and Shevchenko Boulevard. The Institute of National Memory of Ukraine is busy “making history,” in which there are no stories of pogroms.
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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the academic college of education, and the author of 10 books.