Chmielnicki Uprising

Chmielnicki Uprising or Chmielnicki Rebellion is the name of a civil war in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the years 1648–1654. It was waged between the forces loyal to the Commonwealth and Ukrainian Cossacks led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky. In the end, the Commonwealth not only lost parts of its territory to the Russian Empire, but was weakened at the moment of invasion by Sweden: The Deluge.

Jews and the Uprising

The Jewish Encyclopedia explains why Jews were targeted in the Cossack massacres:

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:"The Jews increased rapidly in the Little Russian territories at the beginning of the seventeenth century. They farmed not only the taxes, but even the revenues of the Greek Orthodox Church. At every christening or funeral the peasants had to pay a fee to the Jew. The lords were the absolute rulers of their estates, and the peasants their dependent subjects. When a lord or any other member of the nobility leased his villages or estates to a Jew, his authority also was delegated to the latter, who even had the power to administer justice among the peasants ("Yewen Mezulah," p. 2a). The extravagant life of the Polish landlords, who spent most of their fortunes abroad, frequently placed them in pecuniary difficulties, and their Jewish tax-farmers were often forced into exactions against the advice and warnings of the wise leaders of the Council of Four Lands, and the Jews of the Ukraine often suffered grievously for the sins of individuals of their race. The uprising of the peasants in the Ukraine has been ascribed by most historians to their oppression by Jewish leaseholders, as well as to the privileges granted to the latter by the kings and nobles of Poland. Recent historical research, however, indicates that the Jews living in the cities, particularly in those of the Ukraine, were not afforded the protection enjoyed by other citizens, and moreover were excluded from the privileges granted to the Christian merchants and burghers (Antonovich, "Monografii po Istorii Zapadnoi i Yugo-Zapadnoi Rossii," i. 188). Notwithstanding this, the Jews managed to gain control of the commerce of the country, as is evidenced by the complaints of the Christian merchants of Lemberg, Kamenetz, Kiev, and many other cities, shortly before the Cossack uprising ("Archiv Yugo-Zapadnoi Rossii," v., part i., xxxiv. 134, xl. 156, cxxi. 323; "Staro?ytna Polska," 11, 1023, 1369; "Sbornik Mukhanova," p. 192; Antonovich, l.c. p. 189). It was the combined opposition to the Jews of the urban and the peasant populations that made it possible for Chmielnicki to arm the entire country against them within so short a time. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=808&letter=C"

Related Topics:
Greek Orthodox Church - Council of Four Lands

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Historian Jacob Rader Marcus summarizes the situation as follows:

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:"In 1654 neighboring Russia turned against Poland, a year later the Swedes poured in from the north, and all these groups, including the native Poles, ravaged and massacred defenseless Jewish victims throughout the land" (The Jew in the Medieval World, 1896).

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The Eyewitness Chronicle detailes:

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: "Wherever they found the szlachta, royal officials or Jews, they killed them all, sparing neither women nor children. They pillaged the estates of the Jews and nobles, burned churches and killed their priests, leaving nothing whole." (Eyewitness Chronicle) http://www.jewishgates.com/file.asp?File_ID=687

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The death tolls of the Chmielnicki uprising, as many others from the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, vary. Historian Subtelny, in his acclaimed Ukraine: A History (p.127–128), notes:

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: "Jewish losses were especially heavy because they were the most numerous and accessible representatives of the szlachta regime. Between 1648 and 1656, tens of thousands of Jews—given the lack of reliable data, it is impossible to establish more accurate figures—were killed by the rebels, and to this day the Khmelnytsky uprising is considered by Jews to be one of the most traumatic events in their history. Estimates of Jews killed in the uprising have been greatly exaggerated in the historiography of the event. According to B. Weinryb, the total of losses reported in Jewish sources is 2.4 million to 3.3 million deaths, clearly a fantastic figure. Weinryb cites the calculations of S. Ettinger indicating that about 50,000 Jews lived in the area where the uprising occurred. See B. Weinryb, "The Hebrew Chronicles on Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Cossack-Polish War," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1 (1977): 153-77. While many of them were killed, Jewish losses did not reach the hair-raising figures that are often associated with the uprising. In the words of Weinryb (The Jews of Poland, 193-4), "The fragmentary information of the period—and to a great extent information from subsequent years, including reports of recovery—clearly indicate that the catastrophe may have not been as great as has been assumed."

Related Topics:
Weinryb - Ettinger

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At the other extreme, some modern academic sources place the Jewish death toll in the hundreds of thousands. One source, The Jew in the Modern World (Oxford University Press), states that the uprising "left in its wake hundreds of thousands of Jewish dead, and, according to one witness, 744 Jewish communities destroyed." While the Jewish Encyclopedia considers the figure of 744 destroyed communities "unreliable," it views authoritatively "chronicles" which state that approximately 500,000 Jews were killed http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=808&letter=C.

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