[3] The city was taken over in a late-winter blizzard with considerable human losses sustained by the 34th Infantry Regiment under Major Narbutt-Łuczyński who forced the Bolsheviks to retreat to the other side of the river.

Before their withdrawal however, the Russians had raised an armed militia composed of a small, non-representative group of local peasants and young Jewish communists who kept on shooting at the Poles from concealment.

[5] On April 5, 1919, seventy-five Jewish residents of the city met at a local Zionist center to discuss the distribution of American relief aid according to eyewitness accounts.

[11] The night before the event, two Jewish soldiers, Daniel Kozak and Motel Kolkier, reported, they had been offered a bribe to join a Bolshevik conspiracy in the local synagogue.

[14] Within an hour, thirty-five detainees, including women and children,[15] were put against the wall of the town's cathedral,[16] and machine-gunned by a firing squad composed of the Polish soldiers.

[2] Davies notes that the exact nature of the meeting was never clarified, and that it was variously described as Committee of American Relief distribution, Bolshevik cell or assembly of local co-operative.

[2] Initial reports of the massacre, echoing the claims that the victims were Bolshevik conspirators, were based on an account given by an American investigator, Dr. Franciszek (Francis) Fronczak, who was a former health commissioner of Buffalo, New York.

[19] Fronczak became member of the Paris-based Polish National Committee (Komitet Narodowy Polski, KNP),[20] where he directed the organization's Department of Public Welfare helping thousands of refugees.

[19] Although not an eyewitness, Fronczak accepted Luczynski's claims that the aid distribution meeting was actually a Bolshevik gathering to obtain arms and destroy the small Polish garrison in Pinsk.

[19][21] The version of the events cited by the Polish parliament were based on the account of Barnet Zuckerman, a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee who had interviewed survivors on the day of the massacre.

In an attempt to assure Herbert Hoover that everything was alright, Ignacy Jan Paderewski said that:"In this district [the region around Pinsk], which is the scene of serious warfare against the Bolshevists, it becomes necessary to act with considerable energy and prompt decision.

While it is recognized that certain information of Bolshevist activities in Pinsk had been reported by two Jewish soldiers, we are convinced that Major Luczynski, the Town Commander, showed reprehensible and frivolous readiness to place credence in such untested assertions, and on this insufficient basis took inexcusably drastic action against reputable citizens whose loyal character could have been immediately established by a consultation with any well known non-Jewish inhabitant.The report also found that the official statements by General Antoni Listowski, the Polish Group Commander, claiming that Polish troops had been attacked by Jews, were "devoid of foundation.