The Historic Meeting

Over the generations in Galicia, the Ukrainian village and the Jewish shtetl had been in relatively friendly contact. The Jews had no territorial designs in the area. The Ukrainians suffered under Polish rule almost as much as the Jews did, which tended to bring the two peoples together in the common struggle for their minority rights and for the preservation of their national identities. Leaders of the Ukrainian folk movements often spoke out in sympathy with the Jews, and in elections to the Polish Sejm, ^[17] Jews and Ukrainians ran jointly in some areas while in others the Ukrainian press at times urged its readers to vote for the Jewish slates.

Thus, who would have predicted that these same Ukrainians would turn so viciously against the Jews, their centuries-old neighbors? These repulsive deeds were carried out not by benighted individuals among the Ukrainians, nor by fascist terror groups. These heaven-offending acts were the work of none other than the UNDO, ^[18] the leading organization of the Ukrainian people in Galicia and its official representative for many years.

The UNDO organized the first pogroms in almost every town and village in Galicia involving the entire Ukrainian community in this enormous, bloody event. With the exception of a small group among the older generation which was disgusted by the savage behavior of its sons, the balance of the Ukrainian population now shares the burden of guilt for the destruction of Galician Jewry. Established facts, documents and eyewitness testimony will prove that it was they who were the killers of their age-old neighbors. This chronological review of events in the single shtetl of Skalat also reveals parallel patterns in other towns. Everywhere it was the Ukrainian people who carried out the mass murders. The same criminal hand was at work.

Already on Friday evening, (although some say it was Saturday evening), the Ukrainians in town held a secret meeting to consider the new situation created by Hitler's victorious march. The meeting was attended by the elite of the Ukrainian populace. All segments were represented from priest to peasant. The lively meeting was opened with the singing of the Ukrainian national anthem, “Shehe Ne Vmerla Ukraina,” ^[19] and quickly turned to matters of state. Such questions as organizing a Ukrainian militia and selecting persons for public positions and institutions were considered. Various opinions were expressed about their work, with an eye towards the fulfillment of their aspirations in the future. An important question arose about the attitude of Ukrainians toward the Polish population.

The most important question on the floor, however, was: what is to be done with the Jews? Those who were there, one after the other, took the floor. Whole pages were quoted from Hitler's Mein Kampf and from Alfred Rosenberg. The conclusion reached was that the Germans were to be supported in every way, because only they were the true liberators. “We must gain the Germans' confidence,” said one of the speakers. “Hitler is right. The Jews are a menace to the world. They are like a bone in our throats as well, so let there be an end to them!” In a vote, the majority supported the proposal of a pogrom against the Jews. Those who were there understood that it would be necessary to obtain permission from the Germans. Hence, a three-man delegation was chosen on the spot to go to the Military Command in order to obtain permission for a 24-hour slaughter of the Jews. Such a full day's work, they believed, would suffice to end the Jewish presence in Skalat.

One of the main spokesmen at the meeting was a well-known personality in town, the Greek Catholic priest Canon Onuferko. He had long been involved in business matters with the Jews and used to boast of having been a Judeophile all his life. He spoke Yiddish fluently. It was of him that local Jews

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would say: “ A hen that crows and a priest who speaks Yiddish should both be sent to the chopping block.” The folk expression was quite apt. In addition to the priest and his wife, among the others at the meeting were Judge Politila, Maruszszuk (a blacksmith), Bilyk, Jaromiszyn, Chruszcz, and Wilczynski, all well-known people in Skalat and its environs.

On the following day, the Ukrainian delegation led by Canon Onuferko appeared before the German General Staff carrying a signed petition, requesting permission to carry out an anti-Jewish pogrom. They were welcomed by an aged general who, with deeply-furrowed brow, wondered about their demand. He had other considerations in mind: he agreed that the Jews should be slaughtered, but in a planned fashion. First, however, their physical labor could be useful to the military machine. The general gave permission for a pogrom, but only of eight hours duration. He also said, with a warm-looking smile, that women and children should be spared. The delegation thanked him heartily, bowed deeply, and departed.

The Ukrainians immediately called a general meeting of all their community activists, including their newly organized militia. Those attending decided to make the necessary preparations to execute the plan.

The German military authorities sent a report to Berlin, enclosing documents which demonstrated “justified” local hatred of the Jews. That petition, along with hundreds of similar petitions from Ukrainians in various other cities and villages were later released to the press by the German ministry of propaganda so that the world might see that it was not the Germans who were slaughtering the Jews, but the local populations who were demanding the right to carry on their own pogroms.

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The Pogrom

On Sunday, 6 July 1941 ^[20] (11 Tammuz 5701), at about 11:00 AM, organized gangs set out across the town. The Ukrainian militia, armed with rifles, and civilians, carrying sticks, went from house to house calling Jewish men and youths to come out to work. Wild shouting, curses, resounding slaps, the wailing of women and the cries of children were heard from Jewish homes, while German soldiers stood about on the street joyfully watching the spectacle.

The Jews, thus drawn out, were forced to perform tasks that only sadists could have devised. One group was ordered to uproot some small trees with their bare hands. Since that could not be done, those Jews were beaten to death. Others were ordered to crawl on all fours, gathering stones in their mouths, and then, crawling further, to deposit the stones into pots. Still others were forced to clean privies with their bare hands, sweep streets with their hats and to perform other senseless tasks during which scores of Jews were further tortured and finally put to death. Some of the Jews were assigned to the German military units, where they slaved, as in the days of Pharaoh, while being beaten about the head with rifle butts. The Jew, Chaim Szrencel, already badly beaten, was thrown to the ground and was run over by a truck, which crushed his bones. The victim, writhing in pain, was finally shot through the heart by a soldier.

Terrible acts were perpetrated near the water-pump in the marketplace. There, some Ukrainians forced the spout of the water pipe into a Jew's mouth and kept pumping the water until he drowned. Leib Jawer, an imposing Jew, tall and handsome with a silver-grey beard, had his legs broken by assassins wielding iron rods and then was placed under the pump for a “cold shower,” as the murderers so wittily termed it. The victim pointing at his heart, for he could no longer speak, pleaded to be shot and to end his suffering. The wild-eyed bystanders, laughing and enjoying the show, egged on the killers: “No! No! Let him live a while longer! “ A mob of peasants then attacked the victim, ripping hairs, one by one, from his patriarchal beard. The near dead body was again placed under the water spout, his mouth forced wide open, and water pumped into him until he drowned.

Rabbi Benjamin Wolowycz ^[21] was tied behind a horse and then the Germans, Ukrainians and other peasants, standing on the sidewalks, whipped the horse into a gallop. At first the Rabbi ran, but he soon fell and was dragged, bloodied and tortured, as far as the towers, were he gave up his soul. His body was carried into the tower and tossed onto the growing pile of corpses. A similar fate was that of a certain Friedman ^[22] (son-in-law of a tinsmith from Grzymalow), who was tied behind a moving vehicle and dragged through the streets until his body became an unrecognizable mass of flesh: red and black from blood and dirt. Dr. Leon Fried ^[23] was dragged to the public privy near the bathhouse. There he was ordered to jump into the cesspool, where he was shot. Many Jews were shot by Ukrainians, who then stole their shoes and searched their pockets for other booty. At the same time, village peasants roamed the streets of the Jewish sections, robbing the houses.

The main collection point for the victims was amid the four old towers in the center of town. It was there that the great bloodbath occurred. The Ukrainian police led Jews, in groups of thirty or forty, to the tops of the towers and ordered them to jump, while firing automatic weapons at them. ^[24] The

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martyrs met their deaths with screams of pain and with cries of Shmah Yisroel! Throughout, the Germans photographed the slaughter, and the photos, with appropriate captions, were later sent on to Berlin to prove that it had been the Ukrainians who were killing the Jews and not the Germans. There amid the towers, more than three hundred people were murdered, including thirty children and youths.

Similar horrors took place at the cemetery. Groups of newly-captured Jews were forced to bring the dead there and bury them and then were shot themselves as soon as they completed their work. It was told of Isaac Binsztok, son of Szyje-Nuty Binsztok, the butcher, that among other corpses he had to bury his own father. While reciting the Kaddish, ^[25] he was shot down and fell on top of the just-filled grave. At the cemetery alone, approximately 150 people were slaughtered. By 3:00 PM the death toll had reached five hundred. ^[26] Who knows how many more victims there would have been that day were it not for an air attack by Soviet bombers, which scattered the killers across the fields. Some village peasants were in the midst of preparing an attack on the synagogue. The bombing, and the few resulting casualties among them, caused a break in the slaughter.

For a few hours all was peaceful. Then the mob returned. Even though the allotted eight hours had ended, the slaughter went on for another two days, although on a smaller scale, and additional scores of Jews fell at the hands of the Ukrainians. On Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian militiamen dragged out the three Lastman brothers and Loma Gross, and shot all four on the grounds that they were Bolsheviks.

The slaughtered Jews were still lying around the towers where they had fallen. Then the Ukrainians dragged the Jews out of their hiding places and ordered them to take the unburied corpses to the cemetery. All day long, using horse carts, the Jews carried the corpses, wrapped in blood stained sheets and prayer shawls. Stiffened arms and legs and bloodied heads hung down from the carts and swayed to the rhythm of the wheels. Blood dripped along the entire length of the road to the cemetery writing in long red lines the tragic story of those snuffed out lives. It was the muted voice of the innocently shed blood which the cursed earth was thirstily soaking up.

Deep sorrow enveloped the town. Jews observed Shiva. ^[27] The surviving Rabbi proclaimed a community day of fasting and ordered the wearing of sackcloth and ashes as a sign of mourning for the martyred dead. The surviving Jews sent a delegation to the German commander, who promised to restore calm. The military authorities issued an order to the population to return all stolen items. Of course, nothing was returned, nor could the five hundred lives lost in the pogrom possibly be returned.

Meanwhile tragic reports began to be heard from the surrounding areas. The Ukrainians had conducted a pogrom in the neighboring shtetl of Grzymalow. There, they had driven some five hundred men, women and children into the river and machine-gunned them all. It was said that for days the river ran red with Jewish blood. In the village of Chmielisko, the Ukrainian peasants buried alive some thirty of their long-time neighbors. In the village of Turowka, the local Jewish doctor had his legs broken and was then impaled on the tines of pitchforks. In Tluste, a smaller town near Skalat, the Ukrainians slaughtered all of the Jews.

So went the Ukrainian twentieth century version of Saint Bartholemew's Night. We shall never
forget the partner and the right hand of the Germans. As it is written: Ye shall remember Amalek!

The great tragedy of Skalat had just begun.

Footnotes:

1 khurbn - Total destruction. Return

2 shtetls - Small towns. Return

3 'actions,' - Round-up of Jews for killing. Return

4 Shmah Yisroel - First words of the key Hebrew prayer. “Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One.” Return

5 Podolia - The flatlands of Eastern Galicia. Return

6 shul(s) - Synagogue(s). Return

7 Sokol - Sports hall in Skalat. Return

8 landsleit - Fellow countryman (Yiddish). Return

9 In 1792 - Dates have been added (not in original text). L. Milch Return

10 "burzhuyis" - Under the Soviets, denoting a wealthy person and having a pejorative connotation. L. Milch Return

11 Heeresgruppe Sud - A German battalion under Von Runstedt, which occupied Galicia in 1941. Return

12 goyim - Non-Jews. Return

13 "Eighth Company" - A phrase used to signify the impoverished masses, It is thought to have originated from the notion that long ago craftsmen and those providing services had to purchase permits of which the eighth-category was for the lowest occupation. L. Milch Return

14 Tzen minuten shlachten Juden! - Ten minutes for killing Jews. Return

15 Efraim Diener - According to my own and some other survivor's recollections, the first Skalat victim was Esther Fiszbach's son. L. Milch Return

16 Jude - Jew. Return

17 SEJM - Polish parliament. Return

18 UNDO - Ukrainian Nationalist Democratic Organization, the main Ukrainian political organization in Galicia L. Milch Return

19 "Shehe Ne Vmerla Ukraina...." - The Ukraine is alive... Return

20 Sunday, 6 July 1941 - Another version of Skalat survivors states that the main slaughter of the pogrom took place on Saturday, 5 July 1941. Isaac Butel (Birnbaum), the only survivor of the slaughter in the towers, did to the best of his memory, substantiate the Sunday date. L. Milch. Return

21 Rabbi Benjamin Wolowycz - Another version states that the rabbi's neck was broken when he was thrown from an attic and that he was then killed. I remember this version. L. Milch Return

22 Friedman - Some survivors of Skalat stated that another Jew, though no one remembers who was dragged to death by horses in addition to Friedman. L. Milch Return

23 Dr. Leon Fried - The eye witness account of Chajka Kawer nee Sass states that on Sunday, 6 July 1941, she saw Dr. Leon Fried, Berl Sass (her cousin) and M. Bernstein, lying decapitated near the public bath. L. Milch Return

24 As per Isaac (Birnbaum) Butel's testimony, he and the victims killed late in the day, were lead inside the towers and shot. L. MilchReturn

25 Kaddish - Prayer for the dead. Return

26 I and other survivors remembered the number of pogrom victims to be around four hundred. L. Milch Return

27 Shiva - The observance of a seven-day mourning ritual. Return
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