" Massacre d'Ouman " - Série COMMOTIONS n•12 (2017) Painting by Grégory Dreyfus

UMAN MASSACRE - Commotions Series N ° 12 - 2017 The great massacre in Ukraine, among many others in the 18th Century. Here are the souls of the martyrs of Uman. While two camps - one, Polish nobility, accompanied by its private Cossack militia, regular soldiers ... and the other, Jewish refugee communities from the surrounding area - had drawn closer behind the city walls, to to protect yourself. Resisting together against the oppressor "Haidamak" (these Ukrainian rebel warlords) who would largely sweep and ravage the camp and the fortified city - they knew it, cohorts had already darkened other regions - ... madness of a pleasure to kill and to free "the space" of their "nation". It was necessary to prepare. ... The courage of these two ranks side by side will make history during this siege. At least ... until the extreme betrayal of some, towards others. Indeed, the sedition of the Polish allies ... who will then deliver their Jewish allies, as food to the monsters, although having actively fought and defended the siege all together, this, for days ... to be more treacherous, the feeling of treachery than more atrocious. A few months earlier, in fact, behind the walls, the refugees from the Jewish community had warned the authorities of the Polish camp of the treachery of one of theirs, against everyone. A high-ranking officer, a great Cossack who with his militia was going to turn against the nobles to ally with the Ukrainian rebels ... there had been a witness who had recognized him ... It was a serious accusation and there was had a trial ... but nothing helped - the witness could not attest, he was assassinated. A whole community of tens of thousands of souls, illustrious ... of hundreds of years, wise men and old souls ... men, women and children, were going, after having fought hard together ... were going to be tragically thrown away to the vindictive violence, then to the cruelty of some ... "against the life saved", promised by others - of those who were not Jews but well allies, inside these ramparts .. friends for one times that have once again become fierce anti-Semites. The stranded Jewish community here who defied the honor of the Polish betrayers, also defied by this revolt of the gentiles, the anti-Semitic and anti-Polish line of the evil of the Haidamaks attackers ... They obviously did not keep their promise, to spare who whether it be. Those who remained before the final assault were the last group of Jewish opponents and resistance fighters who had witnessed the previous issues. _Of a possibility of humanity, A spiritual and joyful movement was born there ... And we thought again about these resistances, these betrayals ... Violence and barbarities. Cossacks, White armies, Red armies, (revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries) Bolsheviks, and "neighbors" too ... peasants, townspeople etc ... all engaged in Pogroms, mass killings ... by dozens and in the end, by more than a hundred thousand, during these waves of authorized hatred where "anti-Semitic violence against civilian populations, always tolerated and often encouraged, became common practice in combat units". All these souls would then wait to be raised ... ... _The "dilution" of pogroms: this concentration of brutalization in anti-Semitic violence by large waves of looting, abuses, profanations, rapes and massacres ... for centuries until 'to the Russian civil wars ... are the beginnings of an already proto-Nazi system: deportations organized by rail convoys chartered for the occasion, for example and particularly to the borders of the empires of Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Courland, Belarus, Western Ukraine (Volhynia and Podolia), Austrian Galicia and Bessarabia ... And which in this "immense tumult" in the 20th century, would only be the shadow of this "monster event" that was the Shoah. © 2017 by Grégory Dreyfus Reference indices: -In the shadow of the Shoah: the pogroms of the Russian civil wars (1918-1921) Nicolas Werth. -Oleg Boudnitskii and the great collection of documents in Moscow, published by Rosspen. -The Book of Pogroms, edited by a team of Russian and Belarusian historians and archivists, edited by Lidia Borissovna Miliakova. -Cf. the testimonies collected by S. Ansky, The Enemy at his Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I, New York, Metropolitan Books, 2003. -Paul Robert Magocsi "A History of Ukraine", Univ. of Washington Press 1996. -Article “Massacre at Uman. By Herman Rosenthal & JG Lipman of the Jewish Encyclopedia 1901–1906.

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Massacre D'oumanTémoignagesL'histoire Toujours L'histoireRésistanceGrégory Dreyfus