There was one exception to her father’s strict rule, however, for which Rosa thanked God. ‘Studying music in Russian schools is different,’ he had always said. That did not compromise one’s faith. It was the best way for a Jew to advance in Russia.
They will not come here. Why should they? The village was such an out-of-the-way little place. Besides, they had done nothing wrong.
Of course, she knew there had always been bad feeling between her people and the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians remembered the Jews as the agents of the Polish landlords. They also usually lived in towns instead of in the country – they were foreign heretics. To the Jews, on the other hand, the Ukrainians were not only gentiles – the despised goyim – they were also, mostly, illiterate peasants. Yet even so, they might have lived at peace but for one thing: their relative numbers.
Perhaps it was the Jewish tradition of having large families; perhaps their communal self-help saved children’s lives; perhaps their respect for learning led them to pay more scientific attention to hygiene or make more use of doctors: whatever the reason, it was a fact that in the Ukraine in the last sixty years, while the general population had risen by a factor of about two and a half times, the number of Jews had risen by a factor of over eight times. And the cry was beginning to be heard: ‘These Jews will take our work and ruin us all.’
It was that year that the trouble had begun. No one could say exactly what started it. ‘When people get angry,’ her father had told Rosa, ‘almost anything can set them off.’ But whatever the true causes might be, it was in the year that the Tsar was assassinated that, all over the south, a series of disturbances began which made the world familiar with a grim and ugly word.
The pogrom.
Surely not here though? Not in the quiet village at the border of forest and steppe. With this thought in mind, Rosa turned to go home.
People were moving about in the village as she retraced her steps, but the place was still quiet. A cloudbank had arisen in the west and its shadow was advancing towards her. There was a faint chill now in the breeze.
She was halfway down the street when she noticed the little group. It was nothing much: just two women, both neighbours, and three men who looked like strangers, standing in the street in front of her house. From a distance, they seemed to be arguing. She saw two more villagers, both men, going to join them. A few moments later, she saw her father come out.
He was dressed in a long black coat and had put on his round, wide-brimmed black hat. The ringlets that hung down the side of his face were black but his handsome beard was grey. She saw him wag his finger at them severely. He’s telling them off, she thought with a smile.
And then she heard it: a single shout that echoed down the street, and that suddenly made her cold.
‘Kike!’
She started to run.
They were already jostling her father by the time she reached him. One of the men knocked his hat off; another spat on the ground. The two village men made a half-hearted attempt to restrain them but then they drew back, though why they should be afraid of three strangers Rosa could not think – until, a moment later, she glanced again down the street, and saw the reason.
There were six carts. They had just crossed the little bridge over the river; and riding in them, or walking beside, came about fifty men. Some of them were carrying clubs; a few looked drunk.
Rosa looked at her father. He was picking up his hat, with what dignity he could, while the three men watched him. He was fifty years old, rather delicately built with a fine, thin face and large eyes like hers. Instinctively she wanted to take his hand for comfort, then she realized with a shock that the poor man was as frightened as she was. What should they do? Retreat to the house? Two of the men were moving round to block their way. The party down the street was getting close. Behind her, Rosa now saw her mother coming out to join them; though her husband waved her back, she took no notice. If only her brothers were with them, Rosa thought, but they were both away in Kiev that month. Helplessly, she and her parents stood there, waiting.
When the men arrived, they formed a circle round the little family. Rosa looked at their faces. Some looked hard, others wore a look of foolish triumph. For a moment nobody spoke. Then her father broke the silence.
‘What do you want?’
It was not immediately clear whether the party had a leader, but one of them, a huge peasant with a brown beard, now answered.
‘Nothing much, Jew. We’re just going to burn your house down.’
‘And give him a thrashing,’ another cried.
‘That too,’ remarked the first, to laughter.
Rosa could see that her father was shaking, but trying to appear calm. ‘And what have I done to you?’ he asked.
This was greeted with a chorus of derision. ‘Plenty!’ several cried out. ‘What have you done to Russia, Yid?’ called another. ‘Damned Jewish profiteers,’ screamed a third. ‘Usurers!’ But it was another cry, coming from somewhere at the back of the crowd, that really startled Rosa and made her turn pale.
‘Who drinks the blood of children?’ the voice shouted. ‘Tell us that!’
She had heard about this terrible accusation before. ‘Once,’ her father had told her, ‘long ago, foolish people used to accuse the Jews of the strangest things. They even said we killed Christian children and drank their blood.’ This was the infamous Blood Accusation of the Middle Ages. ‘Simple people actually thought it was true,’ he had said with a sigh. How strange, and how terrifying, to hear it echoed now.
Yet it was another voice which, in a way, surprised her even more. For now, suddenly from the back of the crowd, a little old man with a completely bald head and a white beard pushed his way through and, pointing to Rosa’s father, bellowed: ‘You can’t fool us, Jew. We know what you are. You’re a foreign traitor – a Tsar killer. You’re a revolutionary!’ To which, to Rosa’s amazement, there was a roar of agreement.
How strange it was, indeed. For whatever her poor father might have been accused of, this, surely, was the most unlikely.
She knew about the Jewish revolutionaries. Some years before, it was true, a few radical students from Jewish families had joined the movement which, in the famous Going to the People of 1874, had tried to take revolution to the peasants in the countryside. These were the most radical of the Jews who had chosen to assimilate into Russian secular life. Indeed, in a double irony, many – not out of religious conviction but in order to feel closer to the peasants they wanted to influence – had actually converted to the Orthodox Church. These young people were exactly the ones Rosa’s father, and most conservative Jews, hated most. Their example, her father had warned his children, was exactly what became of those who strayed into the world and lost their religion. As for the Tsar: ‘We should always obey the law and support the Tsar,’ her father would declare. ‘He is still our best hope.’ And indeed, until the terrible assassination, the reforming Tsar had relaxed some of the restrictions on the Jews in his empire. The vast majority of Jews at this date were therefore conservative and tsarist; but one cannot argue with a mob.