Jews need to kil [Christian] boys, we would have found them right
here in town.”
Evzik Tsetlin seemed to be in an agitated state the entire time he was
questioned. The recording secretary noted that he looked “deathly pale.”
“I only have Avdotia to thank for feeling so well,” he replied sarcasti-
cally. “I would have felt much better, if you never lived with me,” he
told her. “I have no doubt the other one [Terenteeva] would have said
such dreadful tales. Why are you destroying my family? You’ve torn the
entire town to pieces. But don’t think that it will always be like this.
You’ll see what will happen. I’ve already told you: you’ll never be able to prove anything incriminating [against us Jews].”32
With so many irregularities in the testimonies, the commission deter-
mined that the only way to prove the veracity of the accusation was
to uncover the dead bodies. So the delegation followed Terenteeva to
Zeilik’s tavern, the site of the alleged crimes, but to their dismay the
only thing they found was four rotted wooden columns. Maksimova
proclaimed that she would be able to point out the grave. As the dele-
gation was walking back to town along Smolensk Road, she suddenly
darted inside the thick woods and began to dig up dirt and old twigs in
search of the bones. Maksimova offered all sorts of explanations: that
they were drunk at the time of the murder, that it was difficult to locate
the spot because they were there only once, and that it happened such a
long time ago. The inquisitors walked in circles for several more hours,
but decided that it was best to return to town to conclude the investiga-
tion rather than waste more time walking aimlessly around the woods.33
In the span of eighteen months, Terenteeva and Maksimova recounted
an assortment of fantastic tales, including host desecrations, or some
variant thereof.34 Perhaps the women overheard neighbors gossiping
on a street or inside a church or tavern. Or maybe they remembered a
case when a Jew was charged with stealing liturgical objects, desecrating
the host, or murdering Christian children. Whatever the explanation,
it seems reasonable to conclude that the women developed their plots
from the narrative fragments in circulation at the time. Drawing on oral
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and written traditions, as well as a wealth of signs and symbols, plots
and subplots, the stories they told worked because they were embedded
in local memories and rooted in the real world.35
The host— the consecrated Eucharistic wafer— was believed to be
the body of Christ himself. Eucharistic tales of abuse claimed that Jews
captured and desecrated the most important symbol of Christian iden-
tity. As the consecrated wafer came to represent the body and blood of
Christ, anxieties about the desecration of the host resulted in anti- Jewish campaigns and elaborate trials. Since early modern times, host desecration narratives had become enshrined in local traditions and liturgical
practices. Devotion to the miraculous workings of the host was instru-
mental to the popularization of the blood libel. When they abused the
host by throwing it in boiling water or piercing it with knives, or when
they killed Christian children for the ritual use of their blood, Jews
turned the blood of Christians into demonic material.36
Maksimova talked about how she hid the host in a handkerchief,
while Terenteeva confessed that she did the same thing on at least three
separate occasions. Both women described in fantastic detail how they
helped Jews desecrate the Eucharist: how they mixed together water,
wheat flour, blood, and sacred mysteries in a special basin; how they
rolled the dough into buns, cut off the crust with a treyf (nonkosher) knife, and threw a tiny morsel into the fire; and how everyone gathered
around to pierce the bread and smash it to pieces. Although they con-
tradicted themselves on several occasions, and at one point Terenteeva
got so angry at Maksimova that she refused to talk with her any more,
it appears that they did agree on the salient elements of the narrative.37
“We have no need for sacred mysteries. What would we do with
a crumb of bread?” Khanna Tsetlina explained to the inquisitors. “It
may have lots of significance to you [Christians], but it means abso-
lutely nothing to us [Jews]. How is it possible to disrespect a piece of
bread?” With respect to Maksimova, Khanna did not hold back: “She
likes to drink wine, for which she’ll gladly sell her soul. She’s a filthy
whore. I don’t want to see her anymore. I have nothing to say to her.”
Evzik Tsetlin could not agree more. “If it wasn’t explained to me that
Christians consider bread a sacrament, then I wouldn’t have known
this to this very day.” “How is it possible to disrespect a piece of bread,”
Tsetlin wondered. “I’ve never read about such things in books. Not
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the Velizh affair
everyone is able to understand [what’s printed there]. We have many
types of books, and it’s not possible to read them all. I’m not edu-
cated enough to understand them.” Shmerka Aronson said something
similar: “For 1,800 years, they’ve talked about how Jews use [Christian]
blood. I heard that they even found printed works that document why
Jews need blood. But it’s all lies. I know for a fact that none of it is
true.”38
“How is it possible to desecrate sacraments?” Orlik Devirts asked.
“Every month there are new developments [in the investigation].” Slava
Berlina had no idea what Terenteeva and Maksimova meant by “sacred
mysteries.” “When did the desecrations occur?” she asked. Refusing to
sign any papers— even though the inquisitors confirmed that all her
words and actions would be dutifully recorded in special notebooks—
she told the commission, “Write what you like, it makes no difference
to me. I won’t sign any papers.” The moment Maksimova walked in the
room, the recording secretary noted that Slava’s entire body began to
shake. She screamed as loudly as she could: “You’ve come here to tell lies.
Do you know who I am? I’m Slavka Berlina. Don’t think for a minute
that I’ll let things go . . . you’ll see what will become of you. Why don’t you just admit that Strakhov taught you everything?”39
While the commission was busy interrogating the suspects, Terenteeva
spent several long sessions recounting what turned out to be the last of
the confessions: a horrifying tale of theft and defilement of church
sacred property.40 In late medieval and early modern Poland, the theft
of Catholic Church objects was classified as the most sacrilegious of
crimes. Although the Eucharistic wafer was considered the most sacred
of all, courts routinely punished Jews for stealing, trading in, or defiling chalices, silver knobs, crosses made from precious metals, chrismatory
(vessels containing consecrated oil), silk curtains, and tablecloths. In
early modern Poland, trials and public executions of the criminals were
public spectacles, and those individuals convicted of sac
rilege were rou-
tinely burned at the stake. As news of the executions spread by word of
mouth, large crowds gathered to witness the executions.41
Conflating the host desecration tale with church robberies, Terenteeva
drew on a long tradition of recounting crimes that were deemed by state
and church authorities alike as most serious. In this instance, the focus
of Terenteeva’s confession was on the antimins, which was stolen from
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the St. Il’insk Church. A meeting with the Uniate priest Tarashkevich
brought Terenteeva to her knees. “I would have revealed everything to
you a long time ago, Holy Father, but I was terrified of your response.”
She recounted how Jews handed her a carafe of vodka to drink and
ordered her to steal the antimins. Terenteeva stood at the church doors
at the twilight hour, just as everyone was leaving the building after Mass.
She waited until everyone left, and as soon as the priest walked away
from the altar, she ran inside the building and grabbed the sacred cloth.
“The decorated towel wasn’t very large,” Terenteeva explained. With the
towel in hand, she walked directly to the Jewish school, where a group of
Jews wasted no time committing sacrilege. First, they took turns spitting
on the cloth. Afterward, they stomped on it with their bare feet until it
was torn into shreds, burning the remains, to leave no trace behind.42
This time, General- Major Shkurin took it upon himself to investi-
gate the veracity of the accusation. To be certain that the “decorated
towel” was in fact the sacred cloth, he asked for Terenteeva to demon-
strate how she sneaked inside the church and stole the antimins. So
Terenteeva, Shkurin, and several other members of the commission
walked over to the St. Il’insk Church. The recording secretary noted
that as soon as Terenteeva stepped inside the building, she threw her-
self down on the ground and started to cry uncontrollably, taking
deep breaths intermittently, begging for the “Almighty God to forgive
her for all the crimes she had committed.” While prostrating herself
on the ground, Terenteeva did not pay attention to Shkurin’s entreat-
ies. Finally, after an hour or so, “fearing that God would strike her
down and she would die on the spot,” Terenteeva declared that she
would not be able to demonstrate to the inquisitors how she stole the
antimins.43
Several days later, Tarashkevich went through the St. Il’insk Church’s
files and discovered that one of the antimins was in fact missing.44
Avdotia Maksimova confirmed that the antimins was stolen in 1823,
at roughly the time Fedor’s body was found in the woods. Maksimova
explained that, shortly after the boy was ritually murdered, Khanna
Tsetlina handed the antimins to Iosel’ Mirlas, who did unimaginable
horrors to it. After carefully smoothing out all the wrinkles, Iosel’ spit
on the towel and wiped his hands with it. All the other Jews allegedly
took turns doing the same exact thing. At the conclusion of the ritual,
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the Velizh affair
Orlik Devirts picked up the towel from the floor and tore it into four
equal pieces, with which he made a cross. Ruman Nakhimovskii wasted
no time burning the towel and depositing all the ashes in a little copper
basin, which he promptly took to the Jewish school. After Praskoviia
Kozlovskaia confirmed Maksimova’s account to the last detail, Shkurin
was satisfied that he had assembled enough evidence to convict the Jews.
Evzik Tsetlin, among other prisoners, wasted no time denying the
allegations. “What’s an antimins, anyway? Avdotia, how long are you
planning on telling these tales?” Then, turning to the commission, he
burst out, “I don’t want to listen to any of this anymore. I don’t want
to talk to her anymore.” Later that afternoon, he continued, “You’ve
completely ruined our town, destroyed our homes, our families. We’re
wasted, done for!” Khanna Tsetlina also could not comprehend the sig-
nificance of the towel. She told Avdotia, “Avdotiushka, Avdotiushka,
God only knows, you need to remember that the time will come when
you too will die and enter the next world. You need to be honest about
everything that has happened [here in town]. Did we really do all those
things you’ve described?” To Kozlovskaia, “It’s not true, it’s not true!
Praskoviia, you know this never happened. The towel was never spit
on, stomped on, or burned. I was never with you at the school; you
never worked for me.” And to Terenteeva, “I never sent you over to the
priest with a bottle of vodka. Why would I do something like that? Why
would I ask you when I have my own domestic servant? I never even
knew you [at that time].”45
Shkurin questioned many other prisoners, but they all stood their
ground. Slava Berlina, for instance, told the inquisitorial commission
that she had no interest in signing the confession papers. “I’m a woman.
I don’t know the laws of the land. The governor- general is not the
emperor. . . . But I’m certain that I along with [all the other prisoners]
will be proven innocent in due time.”46 Another prisoner claimed that
she never lived in Velizh before and therefore had no idea why she was
asked to testify. With tears in his eyes, Iosel’ Glikman got down on both
knees, explaining to the general- major, “God knows, Your Excellency,
I know absolutely nothing [about the murder]. If something does come
to light in the criminal investigation, then all Jews will be found guilty
[of ritual murder].” Zusia Rudniakov remarked, “Perhaps it’s true. I’m
just a poor peddler, what do I know? I don’t associate with the wealthy
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Jews in town. I’ve never been [to their homes]. They don’t ever talk with
me. I don’t know how to read or write. The only thing I know is that I’ve
never heard of such things before.” Nota Prudkov (before he confessed
to the alleged crime) said that he could not agree more. “Go talk to
Beniiamin Solomon, he’s a learned Jew, ask our rabbis, all the apostates
[in town]— they’ll all tell you that this couldn’t have happened. Jews
don’t need blood. The antimins and the blood is one and the same thing.
This is a church towel, for God’s sake, they hang people for stealing these
[types of sacred objects].”47
In 1827 and 1828, at the height of the panic in Velizh, fears of mass
Jewish conspiracies to murder Christian children spread across the
northwest provinces of the Russian Empire. The interrogations revealed
that little Fedor’s murder was of a much wider problem. It was not
just that Terenteeva and Maksimova confessed to helping Jews kill the
noblewoman Dvorzhetskaia and eight more Christian children. No less
disturbing were the reports of cases that suddenly popped up in nearby
towns. First, a seven- year- old boy was found near a lake in Tel’she,
Kovno province. Shortly thereafter, residents claimed to have witnessed
two J
ews kidnap and kill the farm boy. A lengthy criminal investigation
ensued and as many as twenty- eight Jews were arrested on mass suspi-
cion of ritual murder. Then, in Grodno, authorities decided to reopen
a criminal case that had been closed for more than a decade. In light of
the Velizh investigation, they wanted to be absolutely certain that Jews
did not cover up the murder.48
There was nothing remarkable about the intensification of the crim-
inal investigation. In different global locales, the pursuit of transpar-
ency prompted passionate crusades to uncover destructive hands of evil
agents.49 In villages and small towns of the Swabian- Franconian border-
lands, for example, rumors of monstrous conspiracies of mass poisons,
fantastic tales of murdered babies, and macabre accounts of atrocities led
to widespread arrests of alleged witches. Merchants, peddlers, wander-
ing craftsmen, and itinerant preachers passed on the local gossip as they
traveled from town to town and region to region.50 The fears quickly
spread through different parts of early modern Europe. All in all, by the
end of the seventeenth century, the great witch- hunts resulted in more
than 110,000 arrests and 60,000 executions, with many more individu-
als forced to live their daily lives under constant threat of suspicion.51
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Although the Velizh case did not spread to such depths, the pres-
sure to accuse generated a powerful dynamic of its own, until more
and more members of the community were drawn in. Connecting the
past with the present, rumor with real- life historical events, Terenteeva, Maksimova, and Kozlovskaia lashed out at those people who stood the
most to lose in a confrontation that threatened to destabilize the town’s
power structure. Without a firm social basis— without, in other words,
so much support from the Christian residents— it seems highly unlikely
that the accusers would have targeted so many persons of respect,
responsibility, and authority. Here, too, the local currents conformed to
patterns that played out elsewhere. But whereas certain individuals— at
the height of the witchcraft accusations, in seventeenth- century Salem,
Massachusetts, for example— remained off limits, all the Jews in Velizh
The Velizh Affair Page 20