noon, a company of soldiers appeared in the market- place, shooting in all directions. Jewish passersby ran for cover. The soldiers scattered the groups into the nearby streets, firing upon innocent bystanders and into Jewish homes. This continued into the night. The toll in the Jewish Hospital was several scores of wounded and two rows of dead bodies, the victims of military bullets. The carnage of the murderous pogrom in Bialystok of June 1-3, 1906 was even more dreadful. The Jewish Hospital in Bialystok was overflowing with visitors to the wounded. A heartrending outcry was heard when the public saw stacks of murdered victims in the hos- pital courtyard. Eighty martyrs lay there. Days later another twenty dead were added. On the following. Monday the funerals for the mur- dered began, a horrible scene. Wagon after wagon, cof- fin after coffin, stretched from the hospital to the Bagnowke Cemetery. The crying and screeching within the funeral procession combined with protest and uncertainty. Many were consumed with a desire for revenge. All the dead were buried in one mass grave. Two DAVID SOHN Victims of the tragic Saturday of July 30, 1905, when Russian soldiers slaughtered 25 Jews in Surazer Street. months after the pogrom, social revolutionaries shot to death the stationmaster at the railroad who supervised the killing of ten Jews at the railroad station. Other prominent leaders of the pogrom were later assassi- nated in Grodno and St. Petersburg. THE POGROM AGAINST THE JEWS Bor three whole days, June 1 to 3, 1906, Czarist mur- derers ravaged the people and property of the defense- less Jewish community in Bialystok. ‘‘Green Thursday,” June 1, 1906, the first day of the pogrom, did not come as a complete surprise to the Jews. In fact, the town of Bialystok had expected an onslaught for a long time. Ever since the chief of the Czarist police force had been assassinated, people noticed that the police, together with the military garrison in Bialy- stok, were preparing for a bloodbath against the Jews. Ironically, the police chief was liberal, beloved by the entire city. The revolutionary parties of Bialystok at that time had no reason to be hostile toward him. One Sunday, when Russian soldiers ran wild in the market- place, wishing to implement a “hard 1186" policy against the Jews, the chief of police sent his forces to quiet them. He then uttered an historic declaration: ‘‘As long as I live, there will be no pogrom in Bialystok.” The then-prosecutor of the town, however, was a fervent anti-Semite who conspired against the police chief because of the latter’s liberalism. That district attorney was one of the main organizers of the pogrom. As was later revealed, plans were made for the attack to occur on “Green Thursday,” a Christian holiday, when many gentiles gathered to march in a religious proces- sion through the main streets. On that day two proces- sions took place: the first was a Catholic parade that Started from the Polish church in Bialystok, and the 16 other a Russian Orthodox march originating from the Russian church. When the second procession reached סאי"‎ City,” a section of Bialystok, someone fired a shot as a signal for the pogrom to begin, and the slaughter of the Jews commenced. Hundreds of hooli- gans armed with crowbars, knives and axes, escorted by police and soldiers, fanned out into the center of the city, smashing doors and windows of houses and stores, looting and pillaging everything in sight. The unarmed Jewish population, terrified by these murderous acts, ran for cover in airless cellars and attics, where they hid for the entire three days, hungry and prostrate, antici- pating death at any moment. The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the city. Armed soldiers and police went shooting in the streets and houses while bandits broke into and robbed the stores. On Thursday and Friday nights the shooting increased. The town went deathly still whenever steps were heard outside on the sidewalks. This meant the marauders were near and might, to the horror of Jews concealed in their homes, enter. In fact, on both these nights soldiers, police and hooligans did. break into many Jewish homes, committing brutal murders. Either they shot people on the spot or forced a whole group out into the street and killed them there. Worst of all was when these vicious criminals gouged people’s eyes out with their nails or stuffed their cut-open abdomens The Bialystoker Memorial Book