The Velizh Affair
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the fair. “I pray that you not worry about us and turn melancholy,” she concluded the letter. “Save your health, otherwise you’ll fall ill. Why haven’t you sent back shirts to wash? Why haven’t you sent back the dirty dishes?”45
On another occasion, Khrupin’s wife wrote with news of their son,
expressing fear that their correspondence would be discovered:
Your son misses you terribly. In the coming days, he will study at
home . . . He has already started to read the siddur (prayer book) and is getting pretty good at it. Don’t worry about me or about our household expenses, nothing has changed. But I miss you. I have no idea if
you’ve received all the food and drinks that I’ve sent you. I also can’t
understand why you don’t finish your meals— just so that you send
back a note? I’m extremely afraid [the guards will discover our corre-
spondence]. I don’t advise you to send notes this way. Don’t worry that
they’ve locked you so tightly. They didn’t do this because you did some-
thing wrong, but because Nota [Prudkov] escaped from prison. . . .
The investigation is making all of us [in town] terribly frightened. It’s
wartime here. They’ve just conscripted several of our brothers [into
the cantonist battalions]. If it’s possible to send a note by way of your
[trustworthy] contact, please do so, but don’t ask anyone else.”46
Prisoners fought the grinding idleness and boredom in a variety of
ways. Khanna Tsetlina, for example, asked for yarn and needle and
some books; another prisoner requested reading material, including
two Talmud volumes, and ink.47 When distractions failed to produce
the desired results, religious faith helped ease the emotional stress of
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separation. Blessings over food, recitations and prayers, and the obser-
vance of fasts and feasts on the Jewish calendar helped structure daily
life. One prisoner, for example, requested an assortment of items from
home for Passover, so that he could “read the history of the Israelite
exodus from Egypt by candlelight.” He asked for the Seder wine, a clean
white tablecloth, and a small handkerchief to cover his head. Several
days later, the same prisoner followed up with a more detailed list:
unleavened bread (to be delivered before the start of Passover), horse-
radish tops, baked wings (any bird sufficed), onion sprouts, a mix made
of crushed nuts and apples, English pepper, cinnamon, Rennes wine,
a drink made with honey, and a glass for the wine. “Praise be to God
that he hasn’t deprived me of his mercy, and I haven’t been sent to the
dark place, the attic, where it’s impossible to see a thing, with the other two Jews.” He concluded, “I ask that you also bring me tea and sugar
for the holiday, and eggs and fish for the holiday dinner, if they aren’t
too expensive. I don’t have any more news. God have mercy on me.”48
Invariably, the imprisoned Jews suffered from poor health and
hygiene. The correspondence offers a graphic record of their ailments: of
chronic illnesses, nervous spells, and stomach ailments. Jews described
their health in unusually candid terms. “I’m very sick,” one prisoner
wrote. “My arm, side of my body, and head all hurt badly. The doctor
prescribed me medicine, but now I have none left. I tried to inform [the
inquisitorial commission] of how awful I feel, but no one pays attention
to me.” He continued, “The doctor used to come by every other day,
but now visits once a week and this is why my health has deteriorated
so quickly. God only knows what will happen to me. I am sick, and
it’s impossible to get through to anyone.”49 Medicine was not always
available or effective. One prisoner, for example, asked for better food
to relieve the pain. “I’m not well,” he wrote, “I took some powder, but
it didn’t do me any good. It seems I have hemorrhoids. . . . Today I also
took a cocktail of pills to help the constipation. It’s really bothering me.
I have a good appetite, thank God, but I’m having a really hard time.”50
At a later date, the same prisoner reported that he wasn’t able to control
the illness: “I’m very sick, God have mercy on me. I’m suffering from
constipation for a long time now. I’ve tried medicine, but the powder
doesn’t seem to work. I have stools filled with bloody water nearly twice
a day, but I’m still bloated like a barrel. I feel the blood pulsating inside
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me and on top of that there’s the constipation. I beg you, my merciful
brothers, pray that I come out alive. Although I have an extraordinary
appetite, I’ve assumed that I shouldn’t eat when taking medicine. That
didn’t help; the doctor finally instructed me to eat.”51
More than anything else, the Jews wanted to get out. They scribbled
notes at great personal risk in the hope that someone would save them
from their predicament. Khaim Khrupin implored his wife to help
spread the word. “I write to you, dear brothers of Israel, to come to
our rescue. Woe is me! Woe is me! Take pity on us. Hurry, come quick,
they’re doing terrible things to us!” Khrupin was convinced that it was
just a matter of time before Terenteeva’s accusations would be discred-
ited. “If they find even a smidgen of truth in anything she says about us,
I’m ready to be hung by a noose in the middle of the market square.”52
Other prisoners appealed to friends and family members to take their
pleas seriously. One prisoner, for instance, described how the inquisitors
made her sit in a room in front of the three accusers. “The women talked
until I blacked out. I have no idea what happened afterwards. From the
very beginning [of the confrontation], I stood my ground and denied
everything until they decided to bring me back to my room. I’m telling
you one more time that the situation is really bad here. Take pity on us,
do something for God’s sake! You have nothing to fear. You should know
that we’re losing hope. Don’t think for a moment that I’m writing this
note because I’m feeling sorry for myself. We’re all in this together.”53
In no time, communication turned into an elaborate game of conceal-
ment.54 Although the guards were generally receptive to black- market
dealings with the prisoners, there were plenty of occasions when they
managed to confiscate personal correspondence in search of Jews’ dark
secrets. “A few weeks ago a guard walked into my room and found two
wooden chips under my pillow,” one unidentified prisoner remarked.
“He grabbed both pieces of wood and immediately threw them into the
fire.”55 When bribes proved dangerous or ineffective, Jews passed notes
in bowls and pots, inside beef and fish dishes, in bottles of wine and
water, in the linings of dresses and caftans, and in women’s hairpieces.
No matter how hard Jews tried to conceal their intentions, the highly
elaborate schemes were not always successful. Prisoners expressed frustra-
tion that their messages were falling on deaf ears. “I have already written to you regarding the troubles I’ve experienced,” Iankel’ Chernomordik
<
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wrote to an unidentified friend or family member. “You don’t bother to
look for scraps of wood [that is, the handwritten notes] in the items that
I’m sending back to you.” Chernomordik tried to attach short notes in
a teapot, stockings, spoons, clothing, and tzitzit (pieces of knotted ritual fringes). “You’re as slow as an ass, and for some reason can’t seem to
comprehend my signals,” he remarked. “I told you to tie the string into a
knot and look carefully at the dish I’m sending back to you.”56 In another
message, this time to a different friend or family member, Chernomordik
did not hold back, “It pains me that I haven’t been able to eat all this
time. I’ve tried to instruct him to hook a piece of string inside the dish
[to retrieve my note]. I’m sending back the fish one more time, but he
can’t seem to comprehend why I’m doing this.57 Writing in a similar vein,
another prisoner could not understand why all of his notes have gone
unanswered. “It’s as if I’m throwing a stone into the sea.”58
For the inquisitors, the confiscated notes offered additional proof of
Jews’ complicity in the ritual crime. Linguistic experts, most of whom
were apostates from Judaism employed by the state, observed that Jews
encrypted the texts with “special coded Hebrew words, making it extraor-
dinarily difficult to understand their real meaning.”59 Strakhov was con-
vinced that Jews were manipulating the criminal investigation and that
they were sending secret messages to prepare their friends and family in
case they too were summoned to the interrogation chamber. How else to
explain why Jews went to such great lengths to communicate with one
another?60 To expose the depth of the conspiracy, the inquisitors con-
fronted the prisoners with the notes, but the prisoners caught on to the
tactics. Khaim Khrupin acknowledged that he had written the letters so
that his wife would “run to the capital and appeal to the emperor.” “You’re a bunch of liars,” he exclaimed. “You’re breaking the law. I’ll reveal everything to the emperor!” Itka Tsetlina reassured the inquisitors that she had no idea what the notes meant because she had no recollection of having
written them. Another prisoner acknowledged that the notes could be
his, but he could not remember for certain. “This is not my handwriting;
these are not my letters. Hit me! I’d be better off if you struck me down!
What will happen to me [if you do]? All of you officials are breaking the
law. We Jews are trying to tell the truth, but no one’s listening to us.”61
Given the harsh realities of confinement, it is remarkable that so many
Jews stood their ground as firmly as they did, although, as might be
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expected, this was not the case for everyone. At least a handful of people
felt that by telling the interrogators what they wanted to hear they would
be afforded judicial leniency. Itsko Nakhimovskii, for example, was impris-
oned for almost two years when he finally broke down, promising to “reveal
the truth.” For ten or twelve years (he could not remember for sure), Itsko rented two rooms from Shmerka Berlin, from where he operated a small
tavern and sold oats and hay. Itsko told Strakhov that he was left with nothing more than his memory, soul, and ability to communicate: “My memory
would recall what really happened, my tongue would describe the events
just as they had occurred, and my soul would make sure that I reveal the
entire truth about my sufferings and torments and the murder case, even
though I didn’t have anything to do with it. Only I would be able to save
my people.” Nakhimovskii never did come up with a satisfactory explana-
tion. As the months went by, solitary confinement made Itsko increasingly
prone to fits of nervous rage. The slightest sound frightened him. The only solace he found was looking out of a small window of his room at the people walking around the market square. One day Strakhov unexpectedly transferred Itsko to a room with a view of the courtyard. At that point, Itsko’s mood changed for the worse. He felt increasingly hopeless and decided to
try his luck and escape. He waited until no one was looking and ran out
past the gate onto Il’inskaia Street, screaming as loudly as he could, “Help!
Help! I can’t bear to be in my room any longer. I will go crazy. I will kill myself.” He made it as far as the St. Il’insk Church, at which point he was apprehended by a security guard and escorted back to his room.62
In the spring of 1823, Nota Prudkov went on a business trip to Riga
to purchase lumber. When he returned in either June or July, the town
was abuzz with ugly rumors. Prudkov was arrested on February 4, 1828.
Standing in front of the commission, trembling in fear, Prudkov could
not understand why Strakhov targeted a poor, illiterate man like himself,
when so many “rich” Jews remained free. The surest way to get released,
Prudkov reckoned, was to offer a “full confession.” Although he did not
agree with all of Terenteeva’s assertions, Prudkov disclosed that a small
number of “wealthy” Jews had committed the ritual act. He did not know
if they cut or stabbed the body or their precise motivations. It could have been done for “religious” reasons, but if that was the case, Prudkov reassured the commission, only “the wealthiest, most educated Jews in the
community knew these highly esoteric practices and customs.”63
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With his confession falling on deaf ears, Prudkov decided to try
something different. One thing he knew for sure was that he could not
be confined to his room any longer. He waited until everyone was asleep
before he broke the hardwood floor with his bare hands, took a wooden
stick from underneath the bed, which he had saved for that purpose,
and dug a small tunnel underneath the wall of the house. As soon as he
reached the other side, he headed straight to the embankment, at which
point he smashed his leg irons into tiny little pieces with a boulder. It
does not appear that he made it very far. The very next day a guard
found him hiding out in a neighbor’s cottage. Prudkov explained that he
escaped in order to convert, something that he had “intended to do for a
long time now,” but the inquisitors did not buy this justification either.64
The most sensational confession came from Fratka Devirts. Fratka was
arrested on July 11, 1827, almost five months after her husband, the pharma-cist Orlik, was taken into custody. At first, Fratka denied all the accusations that were leveled against her. The moment she set foot in the interrogation room, she cried out, “I don’t know a thing [about the murder] nor was I a
witness to anything that had happened. Why was I brought here? I don’t
know these beggar women! Are you really going to believe their stories?”
Fratka walked around the room, screaming as loudly as she could, that she
would be rather whipped by the knout than forced to answer any more
questions. “If the commission believed that they found a fool, then they
had another think coming. I’m not afraid of being rude, to say what’s on
my mind, and I will not stop for any reason!” Fratka snapped.65
But it did not take long
for solitary confinement to get to Fratka.
On August 22, 1827, she asked to use the outhouse, and when no one
was looking, she decided to make a run for it. She climbed over the
fence and made it as far as the neighbor’s courtyard before a soldier
apprehended her. In an attempt to explain her mother’s erratic behav-
ior, Rieva Kateonov pointed out that Fratka “had a weak temperament”
and was predisposed to fainting spells. It did not help matters, Rieva
went on, that Fratka was confined in a dark, unheated room. Rieva peti-
tioned, unsuccessfully, to hand deliver a candle, which she hoped would
brighten her mother’s spirits.66 As the days went by, Fratka felt increas-
ingly hopeless about her predicament. She tried to escape one more
time, and when that attempt also failed, she requested a meeting with
the inquisitorial commission. One of the security guards observed that
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Fratka was in the “most indecent state” when he came to her door: she
was walking in circles around the room, swinging her arms wildly from
side to side while uttering all sorts of obscenities.67
In a highly sensational account, Fratka revealed crucial details about the
murder conspiracy. One day she ran into Ruman Nakhimovskii, the hump-
backed custodian of the Jewish school, while taking a stroll in the courtyard. To her surprise, Ruman whispered in her ear that all the rumors circulating around town were true and that he had personally witnessed the murder. Ruman saw
“the entire Berlin clan, Evzik and Khanna Tsetlin, and many other Jews take turns stabbing the boy with a knife. And when the boy took his last breath, Evzik hid it in his caftan and left somewhere in a hurry.” Fratka wanted Ruman to tell her more, but she was afraid that a soldier would overhear their conversation, even though they were speaking in Yiddish. On another occasion,
Ruman told her yet another disturbing story that confirmed both the demonic and curative powers of Christian blood. As the Jews took turns stabbing the boy, Slava’s daughter and son- in- law, Lanka and Iankel’ Hirsh, fainted from fear. All the Jews were immediately taken by surprise. Slava was especially wor-ried that her daughter and son- in- law would reveal the gruesome details to the authorities. So she dipped her index finger in the boy’s blood and rubbed it on both of their bare chests. Lanka and Iankel’ began to sneeze uncontrollably, and shortly thereafter they lost consciousness and died. Ruman explained to her that Slava also planned to use the blood to treat her husband’s tuberculosis, but he did not know how or when she planned to do this.68