As part of my family history research, I've been working to understand the violent pogroms that led my maternal grandmother's family to flee the Russian Pale of Settlement seeking a safer life in the U.S. Ten years ago I found an account of the pogroms in Savran, Ukraine and since that time I've been looking for other accounts that could add to my understanding of the horrors. I recently found a second contemporary account and it is every bit as disturbing.

WARNING: Graphic Content

Savran, Podolia Gubernia, Balta District

(Peasants – Gangs - Petliyuras—1917-1919)

Avraham Drucker, a 31-year-old merchant from the town of Savran in the Balta District of Podolia-Gubernia, who is currently residing in Warsaw, has consented to narrate his experiences during the pogroms that occurred in his hometown.

In our town, the Jewish community is composed of merchants and craftsmen, while the Christian population comprises peasants, landowners, and craftsmen. In 1905, the peasants in our town contemplated initiating a pogrom, since pogroms occurred in Balta, Bofola, and in the impoverished townlets. However, they were hesitant to do so because they were aware of our organized self-defense group, which had the backing of the state police.

Starting in 1917, several peasants started raiding Jewish individuals, and there were isolated attacks in the city. On the evening of Thursday, March 18, 1917, there were no authorities present in the town, prompting a group of 30 peasants to assemble and demand that the organized self-defense group surrender their weapons. The leader of the self-defense organization was a Jew named Dr. Klein, and Avraham Drucker and 40 other comrades were also members of the group.

The Jews refused to comply with the peasants' demand, causing the peasants to depart.

A week later, on Friday, March 25, 1917, when the Bolsheviks first retreated from the Petliyuras, a few Bolsheviks passed through our town. Everything was peaceful. Three or four drunken Bolshevik drunkards remained. The Jewish self-defense group was quickly notified, and the entire group gathered together to respond.

When the Jewish self-defense group demanded that the drunken Bolshevik looters leave, they refused to comply. As a result, we fired shots into the air. However, another person also fired a shot, which hit a Red with a horse and killed them, causing a commotion. The self-defense group fled, leaving only six men behind. Observing the chaos in the town and hearing rumors that the Jews had killed a soldier without cause, the remaining six individuals also departed. Dr. Klein, who was overwhelmed with fear, rushed home and grabbed his son, along with two revolvers and a rifle, before fleeing the city. His wife was not present in the house.

Upon arriving home, Dr. Klein's wife was informed of the events and immediately began searching for him. Meanwhile, the peasants noticed the doctor fleeing with weapons outside of town and chased after him. They caught up with him near a Gentile's home and severely beat him, nearly to the point of death. During this time, the doctor's father-in-law, Leib Kirzner, arrived at the scene. The peasants arrested Kirzner but left the doctor, assuming he was dead. They hoped that Kirzner would reveal the location of the Jewish weapons, but he refused to do so.

Drucker accompanied a peasant to the doctor's location and brought him back to his home. Upon learning that the doctor had returned home, the peasants looted his residence, breaking windows and doors in the process. As the peasants continued to loot Jewish homes and even set fire to the Jewish center, the Jewish residents began hiding and eventually fleeing the town. The looting persisted until the Sabbath, after which the town quieted down a bit and people started to venture out into the streets. There was an attempt to release the doctor's father-in-law, but it was not successful until the afternoon.

Around 2 PM in the afternoon, a patrol of six Red riders arrived. Upon seeing the Reds, the peasants claimed that the Jews had killed a soldier, one of their comrades, over a sum of three kopeks. The Reds didn't take any immediate action and instead waited for the soldier's funeral to take place. Upon hearing of the funeral, the Jews fled the town. The funeral took place at 3 PM, accompanied by music, and a ribbon was placed on the casket that read, "The Jews killed our comrade for 3 kopeks."

During the funeral, the peasants released the doctor's father-in-law, stripped him naked, dressed him in a white shirt, and led him between two horses to their cemetery. After the funeral, the Red Army conducted a big parade, and on their way back, they brought Kirzner, the Jewish man, back to town. The peasants made a circle around him with music playing, and they began dancing. They killed him using whatever they had, including stones and wood, causing his blood to spill all over the street until he was dead and cut up into pieces. After the killing, the looting continued until 8 PM.

In some parts of the city, members of the Jewish self-defense organization armed themselves and gathered to push back the attackers. As they approached a Jewish home, they shouted, "Comrade, leave!" Gradually, the self-defense organization managed to drive the bandits out of town. They stood guard all night, firing shots to prevent anyone from entering the town. Finally, the town quieted down.

In April of 1917, Drucker traveled to Balta. Subsequently, the Austrians arrived and occupied the area until August 25, 1918. During this time, there was peace. The Austrians controlled the Hetmanate—Skoropadskyi. Petliyura emerged and began to drive out the Hetmanates, causing unrest once again. Petliyura's regime divided into two factions, with half supporting the Reds and the other half supporting the Whites. In October 1918, the two factions started fighting against each other.

During this time, a group of Setchevkias, led by Zabolotny, invaded Balta from Petliyura's gang. About 3 to 4 thousand men accompanied them, and they immediately started firing their guns in the middle of the city. This happened on a Wednesday in October 1918. Throughout the day of their arrival, the Setchevkias gang entered the town, immediately unleashing a campaign of looting and murder. Over the course of the day, 168 Jews were killed in unspeakably cruel ways, and many women were raped. I heard one soldier rape a Jewish seamstress under my window. Her screams were unbearable, and he killed her afterwards.

The pogrom continued for eight days, during which they looted and killed indiscriminately. On the eighth night, they left the city. Ir two weeks, the city was calm, but right-wing authorities, under the rule of Zabolotny and Petliyura's officers. Jews were afraid to even walk the streets.

The atmosphere of fear prevailed for three months, until November 1919, when the Reds (Petliyuras) started to gain strength and drove out the Zablitonis on a Thursday night. At the station, there was a group of Setchevkes with an armored train, whom the Reds tried to expel. On Friday morning, the Setchevkes fired from the armored train into the city, Snipers fell into the city. This created a terrible fear among the Jews, and many of them fled the city. The situation persisted throughout Friday, until that night when the Whites' cheered that they entered the city.

The city was already burning and being looted. On the Sabbath, there was a temporary calm, and we ventured back into the city. However, they demanded that a Jewish delegation bring half a million rubles in gold within an hour. When they saw that we weren't bringing the money, they started shooting in the streets on the Sabbath, killing three Jews on the spot.

This went on from the Sabbath until Wednesday, during which time they killed 238 Jews, who had been hiding in cellars and attics, and looted everything in sight. The brutality included the rape of as many as 300 women, and the assault of eight pregnant women. The killings were particularly gruesome, with dismembered limbs, decapitated heads, mutilated children, and women who were both violated and killed.

The house where Drucker was—at a Christian—Drucker's Christian host was fortunate not to have been targeted by the gangs that entered the city. On a Wednesday, the gangs went into a cellar where 68 Jews were hiding, and used a bomb to blow open the door before opening fire and stealing money. After this incident, the city remained quiet until shortly before Purim in 1919, when the city was left without any authority.

Zabolotny and the Reds then began fighting over Balta, resulting in the Zabolotnis entering the city and killing 132 Jews. Attempting to hide from the gangs, many Jews drowned. The remaining Jews fled the city as the gangs continued their looting. This continued until Sunday when Drucker left for Savran. He faced many challenges on the way, as he was traveling with his wife and children. The non-Jewish locals were too afraid to let them stay overnight, so they had to pay 20 rubles to stay with a gentile on the outskirts of town. The roads were muddy, and the horses had difficulty traveling.

Finally, after Purim, they arrived in Savran. It remained quiet there until June 1920. During the period spent in Savran, a terrible pogrom occurred.

A group of marauding gangs seized approximately 200 young girls and treated them like tethered horses. They led them into a stall. Some were raped right on the street. Some of the girls had their hair set on fire with naphtha, causing them to burn alive. A few of them had their breasts mutilated in the middle of the road.

Two rabbis were sent on a delegation to a village near the river Bug. They were ordered to take out boiling eggs from a pot using their bare hands. The attackers then set fire to their beards and forced them to dance. This incident occurred in Chemerpil [small village now in Kirovohrad Oblast across the Bug River – SAW]. Later, the attackers cut off their fingers and ears in small pieces before amputating their hands and feet.

Upon Drucker's return home, the Jewish community learned about the tragic fate of two Jewish brothers, Yosef and Yehoshua Bershader, who were hunted down and drowned in the Bug River. In addition to this, there were many women in the community who were suffering from typhus. When the mothers warned them that they could contract typhus, the men replied, "Let typhus be afraid of us. We are not afraid of typhus." Many men were killed because they did not allow their wives to be raped. Many of the dead could not be collected because they were dismembered. One person, Fischel Dicker, was strangled with a noose 10 times in order to force him to reveal where his money was.

In May 1920, Drucker and his family left Savran and traveled to Odessa. From there, they went to Bershid when the Poles entered the area. After that, they went to Poland. By the time Passover 1921 came around, Drucker is considering leaving again, but he is uncertain about where to go.

Avraham Drucker

August 8, 1921

Account of Savran Pogroms by Avraham Drucker, 1921; YIVO Archives; Records of the Mizrakh Yidisher Historisher Arkhiv; RG 80; Folder 323; Pages 30028 - 30033. Translation by Dov Bergman.