Tag #147053 - Interview #83426 (Piotr Levitas)

Jewish pogroms were frequent in our area. To start a pogrom they needed an excuse. During the rule of Nikolai II there was the so-called ‘Beilis case’ [5]. Beilis was a manufacturer in Kiev. He owned sugar factories. One day somebody stealthily abandoned a small, stabbed Russian child in his yard and filed a suit against him claiming that Jews took the blood of Russian children to make matzah. It was a very scandalous affair, and it lasted several years. Prominent scientists, among whom was a St. Petersburg professor called Bekhterev, took the side of the Jews and tried to convince the public that it could not be true. But on the basis of these suspicions pogroms began. Pogroms raged in Brusilovo, Radomysl, Korostyn, Zhytomir and many other towns – all of Ukraine was engulfed in pogroms.

I remember one of these pogroms. Bandits came to our home, put my father and mother against the wall and were about to shoot them. But as Mom and Daddy were tailors, the bandits made them sew clothes for them. And they ordered to sew them immediately. Father shows them, ‘here, look – I have cut it, now I will sew,’ but they shouted that they had no time to wait; they demanded to have the clothes right now. The bandits put my father and mother to the wall, frightened them, and Mother fell on her knees begging them to have mercy and told them that when they arrive next time everything would surely be ready. And these scenes repeated themselves many times, the bandits came very often.