Protection by their peasant neighbors, who armed with rifles withstood an attack by peasants of a nearby village, saved the Jewish colonists of Sudiba, Zhitomir, from a bloody onslaught organized under the slogan, “Kill the Jews and save Russia.”
In an armed clash which lasted for over an hour, the leader of the pogrom band, Michel Magdun, was killed and four Jewish colonists were injured. An investigation on a wide scale has been started.
Magdun, a Red Army soldier, returning to his native village. Wilsk, near the Jewish colony Sudiba, organized the local peasants for an attack on the Jews. Dozens of the Wilsk peasants ied by Magdun, marched to the colony, where they started an attack, beating young and old and destroying Jewish property. The pogromists urged non-Jewish colonists in the neighborhood to join them in the attack. Instead, the peasants tried to pacify the mob from Wilsk, urging them to leave the Jews alone. When their efforts were unsuccessful, the Sudiba peasants fired several shots into the air in order to disperse the marauders.
Antagonized by the shooting, the Wilsk peasants attempted to set fire to the houses of the non-Jewish colonists in revenge, they shouted, for protecting the “Zhids.” An armed clash ensued between the Sudiba peasants and the Wilsk marauders. When their leader was killed, the Wilsk peas- (Continued on Page 4)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
