The Chaos of War

Abstract

This chapter details how the Polish nobility and the Jews fled from the Khmelnytsky uprising, which took many forms, depending on the circumstances. The uprising began in early 1648 with the fomenting of unrest in the Cossack heartland of Zaporizhia, particularly the region of the lower Dniepr River. The trouble soon spread to more northerly regions of left-bank Ukraine, causing panic among the Polish nobles settled there, who began to flee, calling for a military invasion to put an end to the unrest. This was not a very urbanized region, so formal Jewish communities were few and far between. Most of the Jews there lived as one- or two-family units in villages where they leased and ran taverns. As the violence began to take its toll, many of them decided to flee too, making for the larger and well-fortified towns to the west of the Dniepr River. The chapter then recounts the “ethnic cleansing” and religious violence the Jews faced.