Anatomy of a Genocide
Page 5
Antoni Siewiński. Source: “Pamiętniki buczacko-jazłowieckie z czasów wojny wszechświatowej od roku 1914 do roku 1920,” Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków, rkp. 7367.
Although Siewiński’s school had catered to a mixed population of 180 Jewish and 120 Roman and Greek Catholic students before World War I, and despite the preponderance of Jews among the city population, the principal’s view of Galicia as an inherently Polish land and of Buczacz as a bastion of Polish identity was unshakeable. Hence also his perception of the gymnasium, which all his sons had attended, as being charged with the task of forging “upright people and good patriots.” And yet, as Siewiński unhappily conceded, prewar Buczacz was dominated by Jews, who owned all the handsome stone houses in the city center with their numerous well-stocked stores. Conversely, the houses of the Poles and Ruthenians “were hidden in the outskirts.” Just as troubling was the fact that the Jews also controlled the local political scene: “the mayor of the city had always been a Jew,” as were almost all his officials. “Even in the gymnasium,” that fortress of patriotism, “there were several Jewish professors.” Such Jewish hegemony meant that anyone blaming a Jew for misdeeds “was immediately berated as an anti-Semite,” even when “everyone could see that the Jews had a hand in it.”3
Like many other Polish nationalists of his generation, Siewiński perceived Jewish influence as both a cause and a consequence of Polish decline. The few “honest and honorable” Jews were merely “exceptions to the rule,” and the fact that the Jews were “very concerned with their children’s school training” merely highlighted the lamentable finding that since the Christian residents “care less about schooling,” they spent much of their time in taverns, where they “drank away the entire city center, while the Jews became the owners of the nicest houses in the city.” This was one reason for Siewiński’s joy at the outbreak of war, in which, he was certain, “the entire Polish nation, oppressed for over one hundred and fifty years by the partition powers,” namely Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, which had partitioned Poland among themselves in the late eighteenth century, would finally be liberated by a new generation of youthful patriotic heroes. And indeed, he wrote, following the declaration of war, “whole trainloads of recruits from the west passed through Buczacz” on the way to the front. They “revealed no faintheartedness: ‘Against the Muscovites,’ they all called out.” Other formations streamed through town on foot and horseback: “Hungarian Hussars in red pants and caps, infantry dressed in light blue uniforms,” and “reserve units, made up exclusively of Poles and Ruthenians,” who were served a warm lunch by the grateful citizens. “To us,” Siewiński commented, “it first appeared to be a powerful army. Everyone thought that within three months they would knock down the entire Muscovite state and then the war would come to an end.”4
On the Kofler estate in Petlikowce there was markedly less optimism. As Kofler recalled, “nearly all the stablemen were called up.” Before leaving, “all of them turned up, without exception, on the farm, fed the horses and performed all the other tasks as on any other day.” Then they “gathered in front of the storeroom,” and “each of those who was about to leave restored his implements to the supervisor of the storeroom, then stepped forward to Father, kissed his hand and thanked him for his caring employment. Father embraced each of them, wished them God-speed and safe return (only very few ever returned alive). This was a heartbreaking scene. I did not cry aloud, but tears ran down my cheeks; others cried, too.”5
But there was a vast difference between these Ruthenian peasants and such patriotic Poles as Siewiński and his sons. Józef, the eldest, was conscripted right away; the two younger boys, Zygmunt and Marian, joined a local paramilitary group of some two hundred Polish youths under the command of a seventeen-year-old gymnasium student named Władek Winiarski. Their plan was to join Polish leader Józef Piłsudski’s newly established Polish Legions, but soon after marching out of town to prepare for war, they encountered the rigors of life in the forest, and many of them returned to their parents. The Jews in Buczacz also wanted to display their patriotism, which meant loyalty to the empire. As Siewiński recalled, in mid-August Mayor Stern invited the community to celebrate the emperor’s birthday, and the Jews “put lights in all their windows and hoisted the black-and-yellow Austrian flag.” Like many other nationalists, Siewiński perceived Austrian patriotism as anti-Polish. At a meeting he attended that evening, where “leading representatives” of the town’s three ethnic communities were asked to discuss “the Jewish question,” very little communal solidarity could be found. “The room was full of Jews,” he wrote disdainfully, and “on the podium one kike [żydek] read from a book in Aramaic, and then delivered a speech in that language.” (Obviously this was a Zionist who spoke Hebrew.) “Thankfully,” continued Siewiński, “the next speaker, attorney Eisenberg, addressed the audience in Polish”; he asked the Poles and Ruthenians in the room to help the Jews create their own legion so that all citizens of Buczacz would “fight side-by-side . . . and thereby protect the common Fatherland.” In response, the old Polish Professor Józef Chlebek, fondly remembered by some of the young Zionists from the prewar period, stood up and berated the Jews for not supporting the Polish cause. Having profited to such an extent from Polish hospitality that they had become “the richest people in Poland,” he exclaimed, the least the Jews could do was to “think like Poles and, despite their Jewish faith, to feel like Poles.” Next the Ruthenian post office official Ostap Siyak stood up and “spoke to the Jews in Ukrainian in a similar vein,” urging them to support the Ukrainian cause. Only a few days into the war, it appeared that the idea of a common fatherland had already expired.6
Beyond national loyalties, Siewiński found the very notion of Jewish soldiers entirely ludicrous. He described with relish encountering a group of “kikes” (żydy) marching in formation through the city a few days later, “each and every one of them as fat as a well-nourished ox, their snouts shining like lacquered lanterns.” These “stupid Jews,” he sneered, “thought they could accomplish in one day what Polish youth had been working their hearts out to achieve for many years.” They obviously also lacked the required moral fiber; the moment “the Jews heard the first guns” in the distance, “the entire crew fled in all directions and on to Vienna, where they could finally breathe again.” As for those who stayed behind, they hid “in some dungeons, from which they later emerged like rats and established a legion of dealers in stolen goods, traitors and denouncers, remaining always on the side of the most powerful.”7
The truth of the matter, as Siewiński conceded elsewhere, was that upon hearing of the Russian invasion of Galicia “all the inhabitants” of Buczacz “were shaking with fear that they would be dragged away by the Cossacks,” and “masses of people were fleeing from the city, in wagons, carriages, and on foot, carrying their baggage on their backs, while the dull echo of the guns in the east could already be heard in the city.” Even the aspiring young legionnaires, lost in the countryside and finally discovered by a search party of reserve soldiers on bicycles, were urgently returned to Buczacz when Cossack units were spotted nearby. Meanwhile a steady stream of refugees from the East flooded the town, “a vast crowd of children, women, and elderly people.” That they were “mostly Jews, screaming and panicked,” indicated that they knew what to expect from the Russian Army. The train at the railroad station was packed; some “climbed on the roofs of the railcars,” but most had to continue on foot to Monasterzyska (Ukrainian: Monastyryska). Fear, commented Siewiński, “is contagious, and there was such panic, that even the most serious people fled. Even many Catholics packed up their belongings and left the city.”8
As these scenes were unfolding, the returning lads of the Buczacz Legion made hasty preparations to leave the city as a militarized formation. Some good people donated clothes, and several workshops were set up in the building of the Polish Sokół (Falcon) gymnastics society, where a cobbler made boots and a Jewish tailor sewed unifo
rms: since he was poor, the tailor was the only one “paid for his labor.” Other youthful volunteers were arriving from the surrounding villages, while older members of the Sokół association gathered on the bridge over the Strypa “and deliberated what should be done with the youth”; some had heard “about the atrocious acts of the Muscovites” and expressed fear “that they would take all these youths captive and hang them.” Late that night the Buczacz Legion, made up of sixty youths, including Siewiński’s sons Marian and Zygmunt, marched out of the city. Only a few had weapons or any training with firearms, but they made up for that lack with patriotic zeal. Zygmunt declared to his weeping mother, “I must leave and protect another mother, who is mother to us all, our Mother Poland. She has now been resurrected and we have to support her. Why else would you have raised us as Poles?” His father was filled with pride. Still, as the young legionnaires marched in formation to the train station, singing patriotic songs, “the city brimmed with much sorrow and grief,” wrote Siewiński. There was good reason to worry. The lads were not allowed by the authorities to board a train, so they marched on foot to a nearby Polish estate, where they spent the night. After that no more news about them reached Buczacz for many months.9
A few hours after the legionnaires left Buczacz in the early hours of August 23, the regular Austrian Army troops stationed around the city also pulled out; they were replaced by a formation of eight hundred reservists, all recruits from the Buczacz and Czortków (Ukrainian: Chortkiv) area. Many citizens invited them into their homes for lunch and made them gifts of extra bread and cigarettes. But what Siewiński remembered most vividly was that in the marketplace one Jewish woman struck a soldier in the face when he grabbed a handful of the melon seeds she was selling. The soldier did not react. But “the following day,” Siewiński recorded gleefully, “the Jews would fare differently.” On that day the soldiers took up positions outside Buczacz and “the city became as still as a gravestone; everyone was expecting something terrible.” After several hours of shelling, the artillery ceased around 4:00 p.m., and people in the city could distinctly hear “the cry from thousands of throats: ‘Hurrraaah!’ ” as the Russian infantry charged forward, accompanied by the rattle of machine guns. A unit of Hungarian cavalry could be seen “riding out of the forest and fleeing at great speed along the winding road, across the Black Bridge, through the Jewish quarter, and then further up the street to the village of Nagórzanka (Ukrainian: Nahiryanka).” They were followed by “automobiles filled with Hungarian officers,” who were inexplicably shouting “Victory! Victory! Hail the emperor!” Finally the reservists abandoned their positions, crossed the Strypa, and headed westward through Buczacz under constant Russian fire. By 6:00 p.m. the shelling and gunfire died down and evening set in.10
That night the residents of Buczacz tried to absorb the shock of finding themselves directly on the front line of a vast military confrontation. Many women and girls who had lost contact with the rest of their family sought shelter in Siewiński’s school, fearing rape. Later that night about a hundred wounded soldiers were brought to the Basilian monastery and the military hospital, headed by the gymnasium director Franciszek Zych. A doctor arrived only at midnight. The next morning, August 25, just before sunrise, Siewiński went to his school to fetch brine for the hospital. “Just as I was about to turn back,” he wrote, “I found myself face-to-face with a Cossack.” Up to that moment he had known of Cossacks “only from written accounts or woodcuts.” This “was a big man, wearing a huge hat on his head, and holding a carbine in his hand.” Then a formation of fifty-odd Cossacks rode down the path from Fedor Hill toward the city center. One of them, an older military doctor, greeted Siewiński. The Russian occupation appeared to begin in a friendly spirit.11
The Austrian military hospital in the school by the Sokół building across the Strypa during World War I. Source: AT-OeStA/KA BS I WK Fronten Galizien, 5540.
That first impression did not last long. As violence quickly unfolded, observers such as Siewiński read into it the inherent nature of those involved. One instance occurred very soon after the Russians arrived, when three Austrian reservists, who had been left behind by their unit and spent the night in the city hall, woke up to find themselves surrounded by Cossacks. As such apocryphal tales would have it, the Jewish member of this trio “instantaneously took off his shirt, wrapped himself with an old blanket he grabbed from the wall, and walked out.” The other two, a Pole and a Ruthenian, made their way to the hill where the ancient linden tree still stood, under which the “shameful peace” of 1672 was said to have been signed, and ambushed a squadron of Cossacks riding past. The two were swiftly caught, “horribly tortured,” and executed; their mangled corpses were dumped on the street. Later they were buried in a common grave on Fedor Hill. “They were the first two warriors to be buried in this field. Unfortunately later there were thousands.” In Siewiński’s telling, none of them could have been Jews.12
The Cossacks were followed by the mass of the Imperial Russian Army. It took a single column of infantry and cavalry three hours to pass through Buczacz. Clad in oilskin, they “stank already from afar and soiled the entire city.” Siewiński did not think much of the soldiers, but “their numbers were impressive” and their horses “gorgeous.” He was not too troubled by the Austrian debacle: as far as Poles were concerned, “from the beginning of the war everyone thought about Poland’s victory, not Austria’s.” In contrast, Kofler, who subsequently became a decorated combat officer, described “the shattering impact caused by the advance of Russian troops, barely a few weeks after the declaration of war.” As the Russians, “preceded by frightening reports of acts of violence and murder, flooded all of Eastern Galicia,” he noted, “the great majority of landowners and nearly all Jewish owners and leaseholders left their properties and went to Vienna or Hungary.” The Koflers were among the very few who remained on their estate, although the Austrian military had recruited most of their farmhands and requisitioned many of their horses.13
From his isolated vantage point in Petlikowce, Kofler observed that for “three days and nights, without interruption, the masses of the military rolled over the main road from Tarnopol to Buczacz and on to the southwest: infantry divisions, cavalry of different descriptions, huge numbers of artillery and supply companies.” Initially, he maintained, “Despite the monstrous rumors, it turned out that in the early months of the war the strictest discipline was maintained in the areas under Russian rule.” At least as far as he could tell, “on all the settlements along the route and those nearby, no loitering or plunder occurred.” But the Koflers also had a stroke of luck; early on in the occupation they were visited by “an observer from the Red Cross, whom we recognized as being Jewish. He was completely overjoyed at meeting coreligionists with whom he could talk.” It was this man who shortly thereafter warded off the commander of a Don Cossack detachment demanding oats for his horses, thereby facilitating the Koflers’ survival for a few more months. Elsewhere things were far worse, with arbitrary violence, plunder, and wanton destruction becoming increasingly common in villages around Buczacz. In the village of Zielona (Ukrainian: Zelena), for instance, a Cossack unit destroyed 105 beehives, looted the villagers, and set their houses on fire; those who tried to save their homes were shot, along with a twelve-year-old girl and a young pregnant woman. Siewiński remarked, “We quickly understood that with the Russians things would not proceed as smoothly and simply as it had initially appeared.”14
Indeed Buczacz itself was subjected to endless acts of random violence and looting. Siewiński considered the Kuban Cossacks particularly unruly: “When they encountered anyone on the street, especially a Jew or a well-dressed Jewish woman, they robbed them right there and then.” He concluded, “No one was safe and protected from such plundering.” Sexual violence too was common. As Russian troops ransacked Jewish homes in the wealthier part of town, they “drove all the Jews out of the houses, leaving for themselves only the young and beautiful Jewish
women,” whom they subjected to a “most jovial” gang rape: “As soon as one group of soldiers left, another one arrived.” Finally, following a military setback in nearby Monasterzyska, the Russians decided to torch Buczacz. The officer in charge of this operation, Lieutenant Majer, targeted especially the elegant houses in the city center, allowing residents half an hour to vacate their homes before they were set ablaze. “The soldiers were especially interested to know whether the houses belonged to a ‘yevrey [Jew],’ ” in which case they were “burned down right away.”15
The torching of the city center was accompanied by widespread looting, in which everyone seems to have participated: “Ukrainians drove and walked from the outskirts and nearby villages” and “plundered together with the Cossacks, and our Jews came with wagons and took whatever fell into their hands.” Siewiński recalled stepping out of his home in the middle of the night and seeing “a vast sea of flames over the marketplace.” The Russians let the fire burn for three weeks, while food in the city became ever scarcer. When Siewiński finally ventured out to a bakery, he encountered Lieutenant Majer, who suggested that he protect his own home by dousing its thatched roof with water. Clearly Poles and Ukrainians living on the outskirts were not targeted. As Siewiński and his neighbors clambered up on their roofs a Cossack horseman rode by calling, “Save your houses, drench them with water, we are burning down only the Jews!”16