Khmelnytsky pogroms

According to the historian Adam Teller: "In the Jewish collective memory, the events in the summer and autumn of 1648 define the uprising in general, and therefore the riots were known as the 1648s."

In 1569, with the establishment of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, large tracts of today's Ukraine were transferred from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the rule of the Kingdom of Poland.

South of the river bend lived the Cossacks from the Zaporozhian Sich, a semi-nomadic society that maintained a routine of constant fighting with the Tatars.

The economic and social tension, which also led to strong hostility towards Jewish lessees, had worsened partially due to religious issues.

Similar attempts, which were also expressed in establishing a local Uniate church and the persecution of Orthodox priests who refused to join it, were made with the common people.

In the 19th century, with the rise of Ukrainian nationalism, many historians tried to characterize these rebellions as conflict between a local Ruthenian independence movement against foreign Polish nobility and its Jewish servants.

The Voivode Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (the Vishnotzky Duke of the book "The Abyss of Despair (Yeven Metzulah)", in Hebrew: יוֵן מְצוּלָה) was the son of a well-known Orthodox family who converted to Catholicism at the age of 20.

In early 1647, his property and his intended fiancé were taken (and according to a single report, his ten-year-old son was murdered) by Daniel Czaplinski, apparently the deputy of the magnate Alexander Koniecpolski.

The news of his victories sparked a huge uprising among the people throughout the country in which the Cossacks and the masses massacred Jews, nobles, Catholics, and Uniates.

Nathan ben Moses Hannover, whose book " The Abyss of Despair (Yeven Metzulah) " is the best-known chronicle of events, described what he heard about the riots in the eastern bank that fell into the hands of the rebels: "many communities beyond the Dnieper, and close to the battle field, such as Pereyaslaw, Baryszowka, Piratyn, and Boryspole, Lubin and Lachowce and their neighbors, who were unable to escape, perished for the sanctification of His Name.

According to Hanover and other record-writers, he pretended to be a friendly force and flew flags of the Crown Army, while Cossack sources reported from inside.

A group of Jews who swore allegiance to the Cossacks and converted to Christianity rescued itself from the city after a short time when Nemyriv fell into the hands of Vishniewitzky.

Hannover and others argued that the local commander, Duke Janusz Chetvartinsky, betrayed the Jews and gave them to the rioters while trying in vain to save his own life.

Hannover noted that Jews were also offered the opportunity to convert to Christianity, but rejected it and chose death for the sanctification of God's name.

In September the noble armies suffered a heavy defeat in the Battle of Pyliavtsi, leaving no significant force to counter Khmelnytsky until Warsaw itself.

At the end of November, fearing a prolonged battle in the winter and after the new Polish-Lithuanian king offered him extensive concessions, Khmelnytsky retreated to Kiev.

The number of people who converted to Christianity, which many of them kept their new religion even after the conquest of their homes by the crown's faithful soldiers, was large enough that on 2 May 1650, King Jan Kazimierz issued a special order that allowed all those who wished it to return to Judaism.

At the beginning of August 1655, Vilnius fell into the hands of the occupier and mass slaughter was carried out, although the reports showed that most of the Jews had managed to escape in time.

But the scales were tipped by the massacres and looting of the Swedes, and especially by the awakening of Catholic sentiment with the successful defense of the Jasna Góra Monastery of Częstochowa.

The Piłsudski (a family of nobility that originated in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and increased in notability under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Second Polish Republic) began to resent the Swedish king, who neglected their affairs, and most of them renewed their loyalty to Jan Kazimierz.

The masses of the people and the minor nobility, headed by Hetman Stefan Czerniecki, launched a guerilla war against the Lutheran conquerors.

On January 22, 1656, the king confiscated the remains of Kazimierz and gave all the looting that could be extracted from it to the army after declaring that the Jews had cooperated with the enemy.

The Lithuanian communities paid a large sum to include in the contract a clause allowing all Jewish prisoners in Russia, with the exception of converts and women who were married, to return home.

The historian Dov Weinryb wrote that according to records about the size of Jewish communities in the 1970s and 1980s, which together with other data indicate that many survived by conversion or immigration, "a reasonable estimate" of all Jews killed - by the sword, by all sides, and by epidemics and famine - during the turbulent period that swept Poland from 1648 to 1677, "will be between 40,000 and 50,000, although historians point to far larger estimates, which are high enough to include between a fifth and a quarter of the Jewish population In Poland and Lithuania on the eve of the uprising."

The chaos in Poland that followed the massacres brought the leaders of the communities and their rabbis to take steps regarding the welfare of the refugees, both in material aid and in halachic discussions to allow a second marriage to women whose husbands had been lost.

The generation who lived at that time debated the question of whether the massacres were shedding clean blood for the sins of the House of Israel or punishment from God.

Many adopted the first statement, but pamphlets published in Europe blamed the Polish Jewry of committing sins such as loan interest, distribution of Kabbalah books to the masses, raising pigs for non-Jews, lawlessness and more.

The massive flight to the west also led to the renewed growth of the Holy Roman Empire as an important Torah center, after years of standing in the shadow of its neighbor to the east.

Although this assertion lost its validity over time, Israel Halpern believed that the effort to raise funds for the redemption of captives throughout the continent hastened the horrific news of the events to the entire Diaspora and played an important role.

The most famous of them are "The Slave" by Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Nazarene" by Shalom Asch, "A City In Its Fullness" by SY Agnon and the ballad "The Rabbi's Daughter" by Shaul Tchernichovsky.