Jews at Number 13 Try to Hide

At House No. 13 cries of murder and of death were soon ringing through the air to the accompaniment of falling stones, cracking walls, and breaking glass.

Continuing A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews,
our selection from House No. 13 by Vladamir Korolenko published in . The selection is presented in 5.5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews.

Time: 1903
Place: Kishineff (modern Chișinău), Moldovia

It is said that they started at the wine-shop, the proprietor of which was, however, treated leniently. The crowd said: “Give us thirty rubles, or we will kill you!” He produced the thirty rubles and saved his life by concealing him self as best he could, in order not to try the mercifulness of the savage rabble. The rioters set to work with the wholesale destruction of everything that came to hand, and in a few minutes the square was littered with fragments of glass and furniture and with down and feathers.

It soon became apparent, however, that the climax of horrors was to center round the house of Moses Macklin. It is difficult to give a reason for this. Had the rioters really some settled plan? Were they guided, as is believed by many in Kishineff, by some secret organization? Or were they simply led on by the fury that sometimes inspires a crowd, that blind and headlong instinct which rushes forward with absolutely elementary unconsciousness? These are questions which should, but probably will not, be settled at the forthcoming inquiry. Anyhow, at House No. 13 cries of murder and of death were soon ringing through the air to the accompaniment of falling stones, cracking walls, and breaking glass.

To the left of the gate, at the corner, where the ground is still stained with blood, there stand some low-roofed out houses; in one of these the glazier Grienschpoun, his wife, two children, Ita Paskar and her two children, and a servant-girl had hidden themselves from the fury of the crowd. The door would not close on the inside, and the structure itself was no stronger than a cardboard box; its only advantage was that it contained nothing that could be broken or stolen. The Jews reckoned on having successfully hidden themselves out of the way. Defense was impossible; the house only contained eight men, all told. Policeman 148, not having received orders, was still sitting on the curb, and the two patrols of soldiers were stationed in the two by-streets above and below the doomed house. The crowd was already possessed by that inexplicable, elemental passion which causes fits of animality to burst forth from under the thin layer of Christian civilization. The riot was now at its height. Windows had gone, the frames were following, the stoves had been smashed and the furniture and crockery broken up. Pages of scripture and of the sacred books lay scattered on the ground. Piles of feathers were to be seen in the courtyard and all around the house. Feathers and down flew about in the air and covered the trees like hoar-frost. In the midst of this mad inferno, in the din of destruction and wild laughter and savage roars and cries of terror, the thirst for blood awoke. The rioters at this point ceased to be men. Their first rush was for the shed; they found there but one man, the glazier Grienschpoun. A neighbor with a Moldavian name, whom Grienschpoun’s widow subsequently described as an intimate acquaintance, was the first to stab the glazier in the neck. The unhappy man rushed out, but they seized him and dragged him on to the roof of the outhouse, where they finished him off with sticks and cudgels on the spot which is still stained with his blood. When the widow was asked if she really recognized the murderer, and had not mistaken him for a passing rioter, an Alba nian from Turkey, or for some escaped prisoner, she replied with conviction: “I held him in my arms when he was an infant. God help us to live as well as we know each other well.”

It was an intimate acquaintance, therefore, who struck the first blow in House No. 13. After this the situation developed rapidly. The first death-groan of the glazier showed clearly to the Jews, and possibly to the crowd also, what was to be expected later on. A Christian spectator described how “the Jews began to rush backward and forward like mice in a trap.” He would be a merry man, indeed, who could discover a touch. of humor in such an episode.

Some of the Jews made a rush for the garret. At the back of the shed where Grienschpoun was killed there is a black opening leading up to the garret. It is a narrow and stifling stair case. Berlatsky and his daughter ran up first, and were followed by the landlord, Macklin. Macklin, as has already been said, did not live in the house, but his daughter lived there; and feeling anxious about her, he ventured on to the scene of the tragedy. He did not find his daughter, as she had already left with her children. His task now was to save himself. The three reached the garret in safety. This clearly shows that not the whole of the crowd was carried away by the same t blood-lust, otherwise the fugitives would never have been allowed to gain the dark staircase, the opening to which was under the eyes of those in the courtyard. The three Jews, therefore, disappeared from view. Members of the crowd, who looked upon it as a pleasure, or perhaps as a duty, to plunder, but not to kill, allowed them to escape. But the murderers themselves were not long in following the fugitives into the garret. The garret at No. 13 is gloomy and dark, intersected with rafters, cross-beams, and the flues of chimneys. The luckless fugitives, after groping round for some time, realized that it was impossible to hide themselves effectively in this close and stifling attic. Hearing behind them the cries of their pursuers, they began, in desperation, to pull down the roof. Two gaping holes, with tiles scattered round, can still be seen, at the time of writing these lines, in the roof of House No. 13. Near one of these holes there lay, at the time of our visit, a blue enamel washing-basin. It must have been the very extremity of despair which drove them to tear open the roof with their bare hands, in that moment of mortal danger. But they succeeded. Their desire was to reach the roof itself at any cost. There they would see the sun, the surrounding houses, the crowd, the soldiers, and policeman 148 once more. It meant daylight, and . . . men.

Richard Gottheil began here. Vladamir Korolenko began here.

More information here and here, and below.

The Kishineff Pogrom of 1903 [IN HEBREW]

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