*Ø* Blogmanac November 2, 1648 | Cossacks’ Uprising
In the Cossacks’ Uprising, 12,000 Jews were massacred by Chmielnicki's hordes in Narol, the Ukraine. Under the leadership of Bogdan Zinovi Chmielnicki (pictured) (c. 1595 - August 6, 1657), Cossacks (Russ. Kazak; plural, Kazaki, from the Turkish quzzaq, ‘adventurer, free-booter’) from what is now the eastern Ukraine cruelly killed Jews and Catholics alike in raids.
Chmielnicki was born in Chigirin, in the Ukraine, and educated by Jesuits. However, unlike many of their other pupils, Chmielnicki did not embrace Roman Catholicism, but early in life became a champion of the Greek Orthodox faith, to which most of the Cossacks and the Little-Russian peasants belonged. He was a relatively poor but very ambitious Polish nobleman who in his action was, to a great extent, motivated by revenge for an outrage suffered at the hands of a dignitary of the Polish Crown, who abducted his wife and burned his manor.
Telling his people that the Poles had sold them as slaves “into the hands of the accursed Jews”, Chmielnicki incited the Cossacks who took these words as their battle-cry. During 1648-1649 they went on a rampage with cruelties as the world had seldom witnessed, massacring at least a hundred thousand Jews.
“The total number of [Jewish] victims will never be known for sure, since the killing machine wasn't efficient enough yet in those days to compile statistics – but estimates range between 100,000 and 670,000 dead.” Source
The Polish troops, especially those under Jeremiah Wishnevetzki, subdued the Cossacks here and there, but they were unable to put down the rebellion. Two historic enemies of Poland joined Chmielnicki: the Crimean Tartars and the Turks. Those Jews who fell into Turkish hands were ‘only’ carried away on ships to be sold as slaves in Constantinople and Salonika, where the Sephardic communities later came to their rescue and redeemed them from captivity.
However, those Jews who fell into the clutches of the Cossacks themselves were doomed. The Cossacks massacred Jews with grisly tortures that read like a manual for Adolph Hitler. Astonishingly, there are modern historical accounts that view Chmielnicki as a Ukrainian national hero.
In August, 1649, after a series of battles unfavourable to the Poles, a treaty of peace was concluded at Zborowo, between John Casimir and Chmielnicki, with a clause forbidding the Jews to live in the Ukraine.
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In the Cossacks’ Uprising, 12,000 Jews were massacred by Chmielnicki's hordes in Narol, the Ukraine. Under the leadership of Bogdan Zinovi Chmielnicki (pictured) (c. 1595 - August 6, 1657), Cossacks (Russ. Kazak; plural, Kazaki, from the Turkish quzzaq, ‘adventurer, free-booter’) from what is now the eastern Ukraine cruelly killed Jews and Catholics alike in raids.
Chmielnicki was born in Chigirin, in the Ukraine, and educated by Jesuits. However, unlike many of their other pupils, Chmielnicki did not embrace Roman Catholicism, but early in life became a champion of the Greek Orthodox faith, to which most of the Cossacks and the Little-Russian peasants belonged. He was a relatively poor but very ambitious Polish nobleman who in his action was, to a great extent, motivated by revenge for an outrage suffered at the hands of a dignitary of the Polish Crown, who abducted his wife and burned his manor.
Telling his people that the Poles had sold them as slaves “into the hands of the accursed Jews”, Chmielnicki incited the Cossacks who took these words as their battle-cry. During 1648-1649 they went on a rampage with cruelties as the world had seldom witnessed, massacring at least a hundred thousand Jews.
“The total number of [Jewish] victims will never be known for sure, since the killing machine wasn't efficient enough yet in those days to compile statistics – but estimates range between 100,000 and 670,000 dead.” Source
The Polish troops, especially those under Jeremiah Wishnevetzki, subdued the Cossacks here and there, but they were unable to put down the rebellion. Two historic enemies of Poland joined Chmielnicki: the Crimean Tartars and the Turks. Those Jews who fell into Turkish hands were ‘only’ carried away on ships to be sold as slaves in Constantinople and Salonika, where the Sephardic communities later came to their rescue and redeemed them from captivity.
However, those Jews who fell into the clutches of the Cossacks themselves were doomed. The Cossacks massacred Jews with grisly tortures that read like a manual for Adolph Hitler. Astonishingly, there are modern historical accounts that view Chmielnicki as a Ukrainian national hero.
In August, 1649, after a series of battles unfavourable to the Poles, a treaty of peace was concluded at Zborowo, between John Casimir and Chmielnicki, with a clause forbidding the Jews to live in the Ukraine.
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
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