26
PARTISAN REVIEW
tensions. Those who had relatives in America headed for New York or
Baltimore. Others settled closer. With his newlywed wife Riva, the near–
sighted daughter of a floor polisher, my grandfather's son Morris-we
called him uncle Mitya-left for Minsk in the north. Grandfather's son
Avrum, his daughters Clara and Soy bel (my mother), set out for the
south, lured by the warm, seething Black Sea and the promise of a bet–
ter life. Only the oldest daughter, the beautiful Esther, stayed behind in
Uman-her granite tombstone was too heavy for her to lift.
The bloody year
I9I9
did not spare Uman .
It
rolled over the town
with its iron harrow of pogroms. While fighting for an independent
Ukraine, Petlyura's Cossacks gave their long-held anti-Semitism full
rein. Day and night, for a whole year, cantors' voices at funeral services
for the victims echoed around Uman. Their heads in their hands, the
survivors wailed: "How could this happen here?"
But you, Grandfather, would know how true the words of Ecclesi–
astes were: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing
under the sun."
You would know, Grandfather, it had happened before. And more
than once.
One hundred and seventy years before Petiyura, the Haydamaks,
bands of Ukrainian rebels, had pounced on Uman. Casually, without
dismounting, they cut off many Jewish heads with their swords, pierced
women's breasts with their spears, set fire to the town. Twice more, in
twenty-year intervals, as if letting a new generation grow up, the Hay–
damaks returned. In
I768,
as new unrest stirred in the land, Jews from
the surrounding towns looked for protection in Uman, a garrison town
by then. To the same green banks of the Umanka River, drunk with fury,
Haydamaks came tearing along, waving their swords. They slashed to
death all the Jews, the locals and the refugees. Garrison or no garrison,
the troops did nothing to protect them.
Twenty more years passed, and again Haydamaks' horses' hooves
broke up the dry soil. The Cossack chieftain of the town's garrison, Ivan
Gonta, met the leader of the rebels, Maxim Zheleznyak, at the town
gates and proposed that Christian lives be spared in exchange for those
of the "yids." So the Haydamaks burst into the town and, with their
three-tailed lashes, rounded up the Jews in the town's square. The fierce
Ironman was a great warrior, but, as if in mockery of his nickname, he
had a little failing-he was born softhearted. The Ironman gave the mis–
erable nonbelievers a chance to save their lives. He ordered the erection
of a huge wooden cross in the middle of the square. And he announced
