The Khmelnytsky pogroms were pogroms carried out against the Jews of modern Ukraine during the 1648 Khmelnytsky Uprising of the Cossacks and serfs led by Bogdan Khmelnytsky against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Khmelnytsky appears prominently in Jewish accounts such as the "Abyss of Despair", though the worst of the violence was actually committed under his subcommander Maksym Kryvonis.
Massacres of the Jews of Poland, Belarus, and today's Ukraine occurred throughout the rebellion, which lasted for many years, as well as during the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667) and a smaller northern war with the Swedish Empire that ignited the riots. Nevertheless, the sudden destruction of many communities from the beginning of April to May 1648 until the cessation of the Cossacks' progress in November, during the war's first year, is the source of the name. According to the historian Adam Teller: "In the Jewish collective memory, it is the events of the summer and fall of 1648 that characterize the uprising as a whole". Therefore in Hebrew and Yiddish, these events became known as Gzeyres Takh Vetat (גזירות ת״ח ות״ט), meaning the "[evil] decrees of 5408–9" of the Hebrew calendar (of 1648–1649).
Thousands were slaughtered or died of starvation and epidemics, and many others fled, were sold into slavery, or converted. The number of Jews killed by the Cossack rebels in 1648 was estimated at several thousand to 20,000. It is estimated that all the parties – the Cossacks, the Russians, the Swedes, their allies, and the Poles themselves, who massacred Jews on suspicion of collaborating with the invaders – killed between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews in total over this period.
Background
In 1569, with the establishment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, large tracts of today's Ukraine were transferred from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the rule of the Kingdom of Poland. The aristocracy, which enjoyed independence and even chose the king, controlled the area that had been ruled until then by the Tatars from the Crimea. In the territories west of the Dnieper River, tens of thousands of people throughout the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth came to settle. The great Magnates, most of whom were descendants of the local aristocracy, established vast agricultural estates and imposed strict rules on the local Ruthenian peasants.
Among the settlers were many Jews. They had been pushed from Poland, itself under the pressure of city residents who wanted to eliminate their economic competition. Many of the Jews were employed by the nobility as lessees and estate managers. Dozens of new communities were established in Ukraine, mainly on the right bank (western area) of the Dnieper.
The eastern side was a somewhat wild area. It was closer to the Crimea and dangerous for settlement, although some estates and cities there drew Jews looking for jobs. South of the river bend lived the Cossacks from the Zaporozhian Sich, a semi-nomadic society that maintained a routine of constant fighting with the Tatars. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had strained relations with the Cossacks and tried to subordinate them to its authority while exploiting them for military use.
The nobility mercilessly brutalized the general population, especially the serfs. The economic and social tension, which also led to strong hostility towards Jewish lessees, had worsened partially due to religious issues. At the end of the 16th century, in the framework of the counter-reformation, the Jesuits reached the area. Although they intended to fight any manifestation of Protestantism, they soon turned their attention to the Ruthenians, almost all of whom were Orthodox Christians. King Sigismund III was a devout Catholic, as were most of the Polish nobles. Under these pressures, many of the Ruthenian nobles converted to Catholicism. Similar attempts, which were also expressed in establishing a local Uniate church and the persecution of Orthodox priests who refused to join it, were made with the common people. The locals' rage against all this was quickly channeled into acts of rebellion led by the Cossacks, who were experienced fighters and who had rebelled eight times between 1592 and 1638.
In the 19th century, with the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, many historians tried to characterize these rebellions as conflict between a local Ruthenian independence movement against foreign Polish nobility and its Jewish servants. The great Magnates in the region were, in fact, mostly Catholics or Uniates, but they were descendants of the original inhabitants, such as the Ostrogski family. The Voivode Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (the Vishnotzky Duke of the book "The Abyss of Despair (Yeven Metzulah)", in Hebrew: יוֵן מְצוּלָה) was the son of a well-known Eastern Orthodox family who converted to Catholicism at the age of 20.
There are also reports of cooperation between Jews and locals against the nobility and the Jews' participation in Cossack raids. Like all the townspeople in the area, the Jews were obligated to participate in defending their towns in case of a siege. In the East Bank, many were obliged to carry weapons in case of Tatar attacks.
Events
Outbreak of the Uprising
One of the victims of the landowners was a local junior nobleman named Bogdan Khmelnytsky. In early 1647, his property and his intended fiancé were taken (and according to a single report, his ten-year-old son was murdered) by Daniel Czaplinski, apparently the deputy of the magnate Alexander Koniecpolski. When Khmelnytsky received no response from the courts, a great rebellion began to develop, one which was much larger than the previous ones.
In the spring of 1648, Khmelnytsky, who was appointed to be the Ataman of Zaporozhians, led an army of Cossacks against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He made an alliance with the Tatars, who provided him with 4,000 cavalry under the command of Tugai Bey. In April he crossed the Dnieper with his army and won two crushing victories against the crown forces, one at Zhovti Vody on May 15 and the other in Korsuń on the 26th.
The news of his victories sparked a huge uprising among the people throughout the country in which the Cossacks and the masses massacred Jews, nobles, Catholics, and Uniates. The disturbances spread to the southern portion of today's Belarus as Cossack troops reached Pinsk. The eastern bank of the Dnieper, where the population was almost entirely Orthodox and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's presence was weak, fell without a real struggle.
The following day after the victory in Korsuń, on the first day of Shavuot, a Jewish holiday, on May 27, 1648, began a mass deportation of the Jews in the surrounding districts to the fortified cities, desecrating the holiday. About the same time, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki withdrew from his estates in Lubny with his own army and took with him several hundred Jews along with other refugees. He kept gathering Jewish people on the way.
Nathan ben Moses Hannover, whose book " The Abyss of Despair (Yeven Metzulah) " is the best-known chronicle of events, described what he heard about the riots in the eastern bank that fell into the hands of the rebels:
"many communities beyond the Dnieper, and close to the battle field, such as Pereyaslaw, Baryszowka, Piratyn, and Boryspole, Lubin and Lachowce and their neighbors, who were unable to escape, perished for the sanctification of His Name. These persons died cruel and bitter deaths. Some were skinned alive and their flesh was thrown to the dogs; some had their hands and limbs chopped off, and their bodies thrown on the highway only to be trampled by wagons and crushed by horses; some had wounds inflicted upon them, and thrown on the street to die a slow death; they writhed in their blood until they breathed their last; others were buried alive. The enemy slaughtered infants in the laps of their mothers. They were sliced into pieces like fish. They slashed the bellies of pregnant women, removed their infants and tossed them in their faces. Some women had their bellies torn open and live cats placed in them. The bellies were then sewed up with the living cats remaining within. They chopped off the hands of the victims so that they would not be able to remove the cats from the bellies. The infants were hung on the breasts of their mothers. Some children were pierced with spears, roasted on the fire and then brought to their mothers to be eaten. Many times they used the bodies of Jewish children as improvised bridges upon which they later crossed. There was no cruel device of murder in the whole world that was not perpetrated by the enemies."
On the first day of June, Khmelnytsky's main camp was stopped at Bila Tserkva and ceased moving westward. Yet, the masses in the territories that remained under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth control continued to rebel. Some Cossack atamans, with the most dominant of them all, Maksym Kryvonis, used their forces to support the acts of rebellion. On the tenth of June, 1648, Kryvonis conquered the city of Nemyriv, where a large Jewish population had fortified. According to Hanover and other record-writers, he pretended to be a friendly force and flew flags of the Crown Army, while Cossack sources reported from inside. As soon as Nemyriv fell, the Cossacks slaughtered all the Catholics and the Jews inside. Hanover reported 6,000 Jews killed, an improbable number which was denied by modern historians but still provides a measure of destruction. Mordechai Nadav noted that events of the size of that in Pinsk, in which several dozen Jews were apparently killed during the invasion, were more typical of the events.
Similar massacres took place in many other cities, such as Polonne and Bar. In Nemyriv, Jewish historians reported a mass refusal of Jews to convert to Christianity and be saved, although at the same time the Shakh (Shabbatai ben Meir HaKohen) wrote that "many Jews violated the covenant." A group of Jews who swore allegiance to the Cossacks and converted to Christianity rescued itself from the city after a short time when Nemyriv fell into the hands of Vishniewitzky.
On June 18, Kryvonis began a siege of Tulchyn and broke through the wall on the 21st. The next day the fort fell. Following a pause of several days on June 26 the massacre took place.
Hannover and others argued that the local commander, Duke Janusz Chetvartinsky, betrayed the Jews and gave them to the rioters while trying in vain to save his own life. Israel Halperin determined that there was no evidence of this and Chturtinsky probably tried to release all those who were inside by means of a bribe, but the Cossacks killed them all. He believed that the source of the rumor was because Cheturtinsky belonged to a devout Orthodox family and that is why the Catholics suspected him.
Hannover noted that Jews were also offered the opportunity to convert to Christianity, but rejected it and chose death for the sanctification of God's name. The historian Yechezkel Feram rejected Hannover's account and claimed that Hannover relied on another person's testimony. Feram believed that the description was a distortion of the story "cliff of the times" about a similar sanction in Hommel that took place at the same time, on 20 June 1648. Meir Meshbreshin reported that several rabbis urged the people to surrender and not to convert, and all of them were slaughtered, but this event is doubted as well.
In September the noble armies suffered a heavy defeat in the Battle of Pyliavtsi, leaving no significant force to counter Khmelnytsky until Warsaw itself. Khmelnytsky advanced toward Lviv and Zamość. In Lviv, the city's residents were offered the opportunity to expel the Jews in return for lifting the siege, but they refused. As in all other cities, the Jews took part in its defense. At the end of November, fearing a prolonged battle in the winter and after the new Polish-Lithuanian king offered him extensive concessions, Khmelnytsky retreated to Kiev.
The fighting resumed at the end of May 1649 and continued intermittently for years to come. Large-scale killings were carried out against the Ukrainian Jews and the parts of Belarus that fell into the hands of the rebels. The number of people who converted to Christianity was large enough that on 2 May 1650, King Jan Kazimierz issued a special order that allowed all those who wished it to return to Judaism. Still, amidst this chaos, many of them kept their new religion even after the plunder of their homes by the crown's faithful soldiers.
Many were captured by the Tatars. Among the Jews, it was thought that the Tatars were interested in any Jew in order to sell them in slavery markets. However, they often wanted only slaves who would provide a worthwhile price. These included young women, men of working age and children. There were cases in which the Ruthenian masses rejected the attempts to sell them slaves who were not included among these classifications. It was also reported that the elderly and other non-wanted slaves were separated from the captured prisoners and burned alive so that they would not burden the caravans.