History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6). Graetz Heinrich
inhabitants (Ab 13 – July 22).
The unfortunate issue of the second war between Poles and Cossacks (September, 1648), when the Polish army, more through dread of the Tartars under Tugaï Bey and the incapacity of its generals, than through Chmielnicki's bravery, was scattered in wild flight, and collected only behind the walls of Lemberg, prepared a bloody fate even for Jews who thought themselves safe at a distance from the field of battle. There was no escape from the wild assaults of the Zaporogians, unless they could reach the Wallachian borders. The blood of slaughtered and maltreated Jews marked the vast tract from the southern part of the Ukraine to Lemberg by way of Dubno and Brody; in the town of Bar alone from two to three thousand perished. It scarcely need be said that the brutal cruelty of the regular Cossacks, as well as of the wild Haidamaks, made no distinction between Rabbanites and Karaites. The important community of Lemberg lost many of its members through hunger and pestilence, and its property besides, which it had to pay to the Cossacks as ransom.
In the town of Narol the Zaporogians caused a revolting butchery. It is said that in the beginning of November 45,000 persons, among them 12,000 Jews, were slain there with the cruellest tortures. Among the corpses remained living women and children, who for several days had to feed on human flesh. Meanwhile the Haidamaks roamed about in Volhynia, Podolia, and West Russia, and slaked their revenge in the blood of nobles, Catholics, clergy, and Jews, to thousands and tens of thousands. In Crzemieniec an inhuman monster slew hundreds of Jewish children, scornfully examined the corpses as Jews do with cattle, and threw them to the dogs. In many towns Jews, as well as Catholics, armed themselves, and drove the bloodthirsty Cossacks away.
The election of a king, which finally was effected – and, though the Polish state was on the brink of an abyss, it took place amidst fights and commotions – put an end to bloodshed for the moment. Although for the most part in a drunken condition, Chmielnicki retained sobriety enough to dictate, among his conditions of peace, that no Catholic church should be tolerated, nor any Jew live, in the Cossack provinces. The commission, unable to accept the conditions, departed without settling the business (February 16, 1649). The Jews, who had reckoned upon a settlement, and returned to their home, paid for their confidence with death, for the Cossacks surrounded the towns with death-cries. Thus, a second time, many Jews and nobles perished at Ostrog (March 4, 1649).
The breaking off of the negotiation with Chmielnicki led to a third encounter. Although the Polish army this time appeared better armed on the field of battle, it had as little success as before. In the battle at Sbaráz it would have been completely destroyed by the Zaporogians and Tartars, if the king had not wisely come to an understanding with the Tartar chief. Thereupon followed the peace (August, 1649), which confirmed Chmielnicki's programme, among other points that concerning the Jews. In the chief seats of the Cossacks (i. e., in the Ukraine, West Russia, in the district of Kiev, and a part of Podolia) they could neither own or rent landed estates, nor live there.
In consequence of this convention, the Poles and Jews were unmolested for about a year and a half, although on both sides schemes were harbored to break the agreement at the first opportunity. As far as residence was allowed them, the fugitive Jews returned to their homes. King John Casimir allowed the Jews baptized according to the Greek confession openly to profess Judaism. In consequence, the baptized Jews fled from the Catholic districts to Poland to be free from compulsory Christianity. This permission was especially used by Jewish women whom the rude Zaporogians had married. The Jews brought back into Judaism many hundreds of children, who had lost their parents and relatives, and had been brought up in Christianity, investigated their descent, and hung the indication of it in a small roll round their necks, that they might not marry blood relations of forbidden degrees. The general synod of rabbis and leaders which assembled at Lublin in 1650 occupied itself entirely with the attempt to heal, at least partially, the wounds of Judaism. Many hundreds, even thousands, of Jewish women did not know whether their husbands lay in the grave, or were begging in the East or West, in Turkey or Germany, whether they were widows or wives, or they found themselves in other perplexities created by the Rabbinical law. The synod of Lublin is said to have hit upon excellent arrangements. Most probably the lenient Lipmann Heller, then rabbi of Cracow, strove to effect a mild interpretation of the law relating to supposed death. At the instigation of the young, genial rabbi Sabbataï Cohen (Shach), the day of the first massacre at Nemirov (Siwan 20) was appointed as a general fast day for the remnant of the Polish community. The hoary Lipmann Heller, at Cracow, Sabbataï Hurwitz, at Posen, and the young Sabbataï Cohen drew up penitential prayers (Selichoth), mostly selected from older pieces, for this sad memorial day.
After a pause of a year and a half, the war between Cossacks and Poles broke out in the early part of the year 1651, the first victims again being Jews, as Chmielnicki and the wild Zaporogians now fell upon the Polish territory where Jewish communities had again settled. The massacre, however, could not be so extensive as before; there no longer were thousands of Jews to slaughter. Moreover the evil days had inspired the Jews with courage; they armed a troop of Jewish soldiers, and enlisted them in the king's service. The fortune of war turned against the Cossacks, and they were obliged to accept the peace dictated by the king (November 11, 1651). John Casimir and his ministers did not forget to guard the rights of the Jews in the treaty. They were to be permitted to settle anywhere in the Ukraine, and to hold property on lease.
This treaty also was concluded and ratified only to be broken. Chmielnicki had accepted it to strengthen himself and restore his reputation with the Cossacks. As soon as he had gained his first object, he began hostilities against the Poles, from which Jews always suffered most severely. In two years after the first insurrection of the Zaporogians, more than 300 communities were completely destroyed by death or flight, and the end of their suffering had not yet arrived. The Polish troops could not withstand the violent attacks or skillful policy of Chmielnicki. When he could no longer hope for help from the Tartars, he combined with the Russians, and incited them to a war against unhappy Poland, divided against itself. In consequence of the Russian war in the early part of 1654 and 1655, those communities suffered which had been spared by the Cossack swarms, i. e., the western districts and Lithuania. The community of Wilna, one of the largest, was completely depopulated (July, 1655) by slaughter on the part of the Russians and by migration. As if fate were then determining upon the partition of Poland, a new enemy was added to the Cossacks and Russians in Charles X of Sweden, who used Poland as the first available pretext to slake his thirst for war. Through the Swedish war, the communities of Great and Little Poland, from Posen to Cracow, were reduced to want and despair. The Jews of Poland had to drink the cup of poison to the dregs. The Polish general, Czarnicki, who hated the Jews, ill-used those spared by Cossacks, Russians, and the wild Swedes of the Thirty Years' War, under the pretense that they had a traitorous understanding with the Swedes. The Poles also behaved barbarously to the Jews, destroyed the synagogues, and tore up the holy scriptures. All Poland was like a bloody field of battle, on which Cossacks, Russians, Prussians, Swedes, and the troops of Prince Ragoczi of Transylvania wrestled; the Jews were ill-used or slain by all. Only the Great Elector of Brandenburg behaved leniently towards them. The number of Jewish families said to have perished in ten years of this war (600,000) is certainly exaggerated, but the slaughtered Jews of Poland may well be rated at a quarter of a million. With the decline of Poland as a power of the first rank, the importance of Polish Judaism diminished. The remnant were impoverished, depressed, and could not recover their former position. Their need was so great, that those who drifted to the neighborhood of Prussia hired themselves to Christians as day laborers for field work.
As at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal every place was filled with fugitive Sephardic Jews, so during the Cossack-Polish war fugitive Polish Jews, wretched in appearance, with hollow eyes, who had escaped the sword, the flames, hunger, and pestilence; or who, dragged by the Tartars into captivity, had been ransomed by their brethren, were seeking shelter everywhere. Westwards, by way of Dantzic and through the Vistula district, Jewish-Polish fugitives wandered to Amsterdam, and were forwarded thence to Frankfort-on-the-Main and other Rhenish cities. Three thousand Lithuanian Jews came to Texel in the Netherlands, and were hospitably received. Southwards many fled to Moravia, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary, and wandered from those places to Italy. The prisoners in the armies of the Tartars came to the Turkish provinces, and some of them drifted to Barbary. Everywhere they were received by their brethren with great cordiality and love,