June 9 1768 – 5 Tammuz 5528
Three thousand Jews barricaded themselves inside the synagogue of Uman, fighting back with knives against the murderous cossack forces of Ivan Gonta and Zhelyeznyak after cannon fire burst open the synagogue doors. None of them survived.
Lack of any strong government in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth had led to increased lawlessness in the second half of the 18th century, with cossacks and runaway serfs, egged on by Greek Orthodox priests, rising against the Catholic Polish aristocracy – and the Jews. There were repeated small pogroms, in 1734 and again in 1750, culminating in the spring of 1768 when bands of “Haidamacks” – made up of peasants and cossacks – swept through Ukraine, killing hundreds and putting thousands to flight, many of whom found refuge within the fortified walls of the city of Uman. Many more, finding no room inside the city, camped in the surrounding fields. The cossacks and their leader, Zhelyeznyak, who modeled himself on 17th century Ukrainian cossack leader and scourge of the Jews, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, besieged the city. Jews and Poles prepared to defend themselves, and the Polish commander of the city sent out his own cossack militia, under Ivan Gonta, to fight the attackers. Gonta joined them instead, and the defenders were forced to negotiate a truce. Persuaded that the marauding cossacks’ object would be only the Jews, the Poles opened the gates of the city. A terrible massacre ensued, and over eight thousand Jews were killed. When the streets were heaped with Jewish corpses, the Haidamacks turned on the Poles. Some 20,000 Poles and Jews were killed in Uman alone, and the massacres continued across the Ukrainian countryside.
Rabbi Nahman of Breslov moved to Uman in the final year of his life, having said many years earlier that it was “a good place to be buried,” alongside the holy martyrs of the Haidamak massacre. His grave, now a place of pilgrimage for many thousands, lies among those of the victims.