more names, but she admitted to helping Jews kill two more Christian
boys.11 The murders allegedly occurred in the spring of 1813. Once again
Mirka Aronson’s two- story brick house was at the center of the diaboli-
cal events. One day, Maria explained, she went out to the marketplace
to purchase a besom, a broom made of twigs, when she ran into an
old acquaintance and her two sons. As they were chatting, Shmerka
120
120
the Velizh affair
Berlin “came out of the shadows, grabbed both boys by the arms,” and
“whisked them away inside the house.”12 When Maria came over to the
house the next day, Mirka Aronson, Shmerka and Slava Berlin, and vari-
ous other Jews from all walks of life were there, as well.
“The boys were crying uncontrollably,” Terenteeva went on, but after
the Jews fed them “several drops of liquid from a glass bottle on a tiny
silver spoon,” they suddenly fell silent. Terenteeva recounted a well-
rehearsed plot. She described how Jews undressed both boys, enclosed
them in a barrel lined with steel nails, and shook it from side to side for several hours. She talked about how she washed the bodies in a special
liquid, trimmed the fingernails to the very flesh, and cut off the foreskin.
The great Jewish school was once again at the heart of the frightful tale.
Avdotia Maksimova, in hopes of “cleansing her conscience,” wasted no
time retelling much the same story that Terenteeva had described: how
she stabbed both boys with a nail, washed off the blood, and helped
deposit the bodies in the river.13
Not wanting to slow down the judicial process, Strakhov neverthe-
less proposed to broaden the inquiry. The first order of business was to
talk with the domestic servant Maria Kovaleva, who, it turned out, was
able to corroborate the account, even while embellishing it with sur-
prising new details. In the spring of 1813, Kovaleva explained, she was
an “impressionable young girl.” As she stood inside the Jewish school,
Kovaleva remembered that she saw something long and round with two
long pointers resembling the devil’s horns. “Iosel’ Glikman told me that
this was the Jewish god who does only good things for the Jewish people
and no one else.” Kovaleva went on to describe another incident that
connected ugly rumors with past events. About a year after the two boys
were murdered, Kovaleva was cleaning Mirka’s floors when she spotted
a little red wooden chest hidden in the corner of the room. Curiosity
got the best of her, and she opened the lid and saw what appeared to be
“three dark red pancakes and a large silver cup.” She remembered, as if
it were yesterday, that the thick dark red substance floating in the silver cup gave off a heavy nauseating smell resembling that of rotten flesh.14
“Why did she not come forward earlier?” Strakhov inquired.
Kovaleva’s face turned visibly agitated. “I was afraid that the Jews would
deny everything and that authorities would whip me with the knout and
send me off to Siberia.” Kovaleva was convinced that her life would end
the inVestigatiOn wiDens
121
right there and then. She realized that the Jews wanted to frighten her
into silence. And now— years later— Kovaleva felt the time had finally
come to “reveal everything.” But disaster struck quickly. Only a few days
after she told her tale, Kovaleva decided to end her life by hanging her-
self. In the last moments of her life, it appears that Kovaleva was certain that her confession would come back to haunt her. On the eve of her
suicide, the guard on duty noticed that Kovaleva was in a state of hys-
teria. He confirmed that “Kovaleva was crying uncontrollably, pacing
around the room, mumbling under her breath that she had revealed the
entire truth” and that she missed her husband and children.15
In the meantime, Jews were summoned for more interrogations.
When she was brought before the inquisitorial commission, Khanna
Tsetlina opened up to the possibility that Terenteeva purchased a besom
at the marketplace, but she flatly denied that Jews locked up the boys in
Aronson’s house. Khanna assumed that Kovaleva was brainwashed. How
could it be otherwise? After all, Kovaleva repeated— word for word— the
same exact tale that Maksimova and Terenteeva had recounted.16 Other
Jews shared similar thoughts. No matter how serious the crime may
have been, Slava Berlina, for instance, flatly denied the allegations lev-
eled against her. Evzik Tsetlin told the inquisitors that they had no legal right to question him or any other Jews, while Orlik Devirts wondered
why Kovaleva did not turn to the police. “It’s evident that she’s been
brainwashed,” Orlik insisted. “Surely, the boys had family and friends
in town. Wouldn’t somebody have said something by now? Wouldn’t
they have searched for the young children [as soon as word got out that
they went missing]? Lies! Lies! It’s all lies! These events [supposedly] took place years ago. But if they did in fact take place, wouldn’t a neighbor or perhaps someone else in town said something by now?”17
In the winter and spring of 1828, the entire town was throbbing
with vicious rumors. The inquisitorial commission hoped to wrap
up the case, but the interrogations only added to the complexity of
the investigation. At a meeting with the Uniate priest Tarashkevich,
Terenteeva confessed that not only did she assist with the death of two
Christian boys, but that she took part in yet another ritual murder, of
a noblewoman named Dvorzhetskaia in December 1817. Terenteeva
explained that she had been acquainted with Dvorzhetskaia for “quite
some time.”18 One day, Terenteeva and Dvorzhetskaia decided to walk
12
122
the Velizh affair
down to the river when they ran into a local moneylender who was
holding a bottle of spirits. She recalled that they took turns drinking
from the bottle “until their heads began to spin.” Afterward, they
made their way to the home of a Jew who lived next to the police
station and the Holy Spirit Church, only a few steps from the Jewish
school. There, they passed around another bottle, and the moment
that Dvorzhetskaia became completely inebriated, four Jews grabbed
her by both arms and dragged her inside the school, where five more
Jews were waiting for them. One of the Jews undressed Dvorzhetskaia,
took fifty rubles from her pocket, and shoved her inside a barrel
that was hanging by a rope from the ceiling.19 Although Terenteeva
described the diabolic ritual on several different occasions, the inquisi-
tors pressed her to repeat the tale one more time. Terenteeva went to
great lengths to recount how they shook the barrel from side to side for
“three full hours” and how they took turns “slapping Dvorzhetskaia’s
cheeks, tying rope around her knees, and stabbing the body with a
shiny nail.”20
The inquisitors immediately found inconsistencies in Terenteeva’s tes-
timony. Given the opportunity to explain herself, Terenteeva testified,
“The events took place a long time ago. I consumed large amou
nts of
wine that night. I visited several different [Jewish] homes.” To resolve
the contradictions, Strakhov summoned Orlik Devirts for a confron-
tation, but the old man refused to stand face to face with Terenteeva.
“Was [Dvorzhetskaia] really killed at the school?” he asked. Then, as
his face changed color, Orlik squeezed his hands firmly together, took
a deep breath, and told the inquisitors in a depressed voice, “My life is
wasted. I am done for.” “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he continued,
“and this is why I have no interest in confronting her anymore. You can
do with me as you please. She is a mean, dirty woman. She lies contin-
uously, repeats everything you [the inquisitors] tell her.”21
The commission concluded that Orlik Devirts was not within his
legal right to refuse a confrontation. By not standing face to face with
Terenteeva, Strakhov warned Orlik, he was admitting to his own guilt.
But Orlik, paying no attention to the legal justification, maintained that
Terenteeva’s confessions were false. “When exactly did the [murders]
take place? I don’t know anything about them. Why would I take part
in such things, when, God only knows, I can barely feed my children?
the inVestigatiOn wiDens
123
You’re distressing me in my old age.” When Terenteeva walked in the
room, Orlik didn’t hold back. “Is there anyone in town that can confirm
what you’ve said is true? You’ve been taught to say this.” “Yes, Orlik, I’ve been taught to say this,” Terenteeva replied, “but you’re the one who
taught me everything I know. Who else knows [how to perform a ritual
murder] . . . the time has come to reveal the truth.”22
In hopes of making sense of the allegations, Strakhov summoned
Terenteeva to clarify the gaps and the discrepancies in her story, but
she suddenly shifted the focus of the conversation by revealing more
dark secrets.23 It was around the time of the Passover holiday, “one or
two years after Dvorzhetskaia’s death,” when Orlik Devirts took her to
a tavern in the village of Semichevo. He left her there for three or four
days and came back with two peasant girls. The younger girl was imme-
diately escorted inside a special chamber and given a piece of bread to
eat, while the older one spent the night in the adjoining room with
Terenteeva. And the longer Terenteeva talked, the more she embellished
the story with new details: how she mixed the blood with water and a
handful of wooden chips, poured the mixture into exactly three glass
bottles, soaked a piece of linen in the blood, cut it into small pieces,
and then distributed a tiny piece to the Jews. When Strakhov pointed
out the inconsistencies, Terenteeva turned visibly angry. Why was the
inspector- councilor taking the Jews’ side? “If Maksimova hadn’t lured
me into committing the crime,” she asserted, “I would never have done
such a thing.”24
The Jews could not believe what they were hearing. Slava Berlina did
not deny that she was acquainted with the old man Sholom, the owner
of the Semichevo tavern, for “some time.” The old man made frequent
trips to Velizh to purchase groceries and other small items, but Slava was
certain that she never set foot in the tavern. For this reason, she believed that the ritual murder allegations were beyond absurd. “Don’t even
bother writing anything down,” Slava maintained. “What the accusers
are saying is a bunch of crazy lies.” When Terenteeva walked into the
room, Slava did not hold back, repeating several times, “All you do is
tell lies! I’ll take you to court. You’ll see what lies in store for you for making false accusations [against us]. You’ll be sent away for a lifetime.”
Terenteeva did not pay any attention to Slava, telling the commission in
a face- to- face confrontation, “It was Slava who taught me the diabolical
124
124
the Velizh affair
rituals. If she didn’t make me drink so much wine or force me to pierce
the bodies, then I would have never learned to torture Jews.” By this
time, Slava had worked herself into a state of frenzy. “The commission
is composed of con- artists who do their work deceptively, falsify papers,
don’t listen to a word I say. There will come a time when I’ll stand in
front of the tsar, mark my words, and I’ll reveal everything. I’m afraid
of nothing!”25
Just before her death, Shifra Berlina told the commission that the
“accusers could say whatever they wanted because they stood nothing
to lose. They drink wine from morning to night. Terenteeva is poor and
lives on the streets.” Orlik Devirts confirmed that he knew Sholom and
that on several occasions he even passed by his tavern on his way to
Semichevo. He was adamant, however, that he did not have any business
relations with the old man. If Terenteeva was telling the truth, why did
more witnesses not come forward? “Why doesn’t a respectable towns-
man— someone everyone knows and admires— say something [against
us]?” The only folks who talk, he emphasized, are “those people that
live on the streets and wander from courtyard to courtyard in search of
handouts.”26 When Terenteeva was summoned into the interrogation
room, Evzik Tsetlin refused to talk with her. The recording secretary
noted that he “pretended to be sick to his stomach.” “You’re not allow-
ing me [to] talk,” Terenteeva thundered back, “I am telling you that it
was you who killed the two girls, the year after you murdered the two
boys.” But the only thing Tsetlin did was wave his hand at Terenteeva,
refusing to sign the interrogation papers.27
However fantastic the accusations may have been, Maria Terenteeva
had no intention of stopping there. Two or three years after she
claimed to have helped murder the girls, Terenteeva insisted that she
took part in yet another diabolic ritual.28 Once again she provided a
long, rambling account, with the exact details impossible to confirm.
At the time of Passover, she said, a Jew named Zeilik Brusovanskii
knocked on Evzik Tsetlin’s door. The old man lived in the village of
Suslinoi along Smolensk Road around two or three miles from town.
Terenteeva happened to be sitting in the front chamber of Tsetlin’s
home when Zeilik came by and convinced her to go back home with
him. “When we were walking along Smolensk Road,” Terenteeva
explained, “we saw four children, two boys and two girls, standing on
the inVestigatiOn wiDens
125
a bridge. Zeilik forced me to abduct the children. I did not have the
strength to say no.” The very next day Maksimova and a handful of
Jews from Velizh came to Zeilik’s tavern and promptly went to work
on the children.29
Maksimova confirmed the tale in broad outline but added terri-
fying new details, many of which directly contradicted Terenteeva’s
account. When Strakhov confronted Terenteeva with this information,
Terenteeva’s behavior changed for the worse. Without pause or expla-
nation, she stopped answering the commission’s questions
. In no time,
Terenteeva called Maksimova “abusive names” and claimed that she had
masterminded the entire affair. Not knowing how to proceed, Strakhov
decided to give Terenteeva time to cool off, to remember the events as
they had “really happened.”30
Not surprisingly, the allegations provoked an outcry from the Jewish
prisoners. Strakhov summoned Zeilik Brusovanskii for a series of ques-
tions, but Zeilik was not very helpful: “I’ve been inside Aronson’s house
before, but I didn’t instruct anyone there to ritually murder the children.
I couldn’t have been very friendly with [the Aronson family]. They’re
important people, while I’m just a miserable old soul who’s no use to
anyone. Although I know most of the Jews in town, I’ve never met
Maksimova or Terenteeva before. They’ve never set foot in my tav-
ern.” The recording secretary noticed that Zeilik “stared at the floor the
entire time” he was questioned. Breathing deeply, as if he was in great
pain, Zeilik’s body shook feverishly, and he did not know what to do
with his hands. Zeilik concluded the deposition by stating the obvious:
“I know absolutely nothing [about the murder]. Why would I want to
stab to death poor innocent children? When one of my family members
confesses, that’s when I’ll confess, as well. But until then I have nothing more to say. We [Jews] don’t need [Christian] blood. Perhaps in other
parts of the world Jews ritually murder children, but I don’t know any-
thing about [those crimes].”31
Although he admitted that he “frequented Zeilik’s tavern on numer-
ous occasions,” Iosel’ Mirlas refused to entertain the thought that he
had taken part in the murder conspiracy. The recording secretary noted
that Mirlas began to “weep uncontrollably.” When he was asked why
his face turned different colors, Mirlas replied, “It’s not only my face
that changes color or my body that trembles. After I talk with the
126
126
the Velizh affair
commission, my head hurts for two straight days, as if I’ve lost my
mind.” Khanna Tsetlina was not very helpful either. When Strakhov
asked her to recount the details of the murder, she replied, “I’ve never
visited [Zeilik’s tavern]. I don’t know anything about the murder. If
The Velizh Affair Page 19