ONL: Levi Charlap's First Vision

 Cain is Levi's guide through Jewish history, like Virgil to Dante. 

Chmielnicki Massacre - Levi Charlap's first vision

Begins with Chmielnicki speech in which he talks about Polish subjugation of Ukrainian stock and all its people, and how the Jews are responsible for it - should have a bit of the tone of Satan's speeches to the demons in Paradise Lost. 

'The Red Ribbon.' Open on thongs slung around the necks of Jewish and Catholic women by the Tartar partisans who are led through the streets as whores after being raped by the Tartar Cossacks, all of them smeared with blood and bruises, while the town men are coerced to throw things at their women for their infidelities. (perhaps here is where to include the cat episode...)

Then the attack on Nemirov, where a rich Jew who operated as the King's finance minister owned a castle/fortress and let in the 6000 Jews. It opens on their deliberation about whether to open the gates to let in their 'Catholic friends' to protect them from the Tartar/Cossack/Orthodox partisans, but the Cossacks were right behind the Catholics, who were threatened with massacre if they did not petition the Jews to be let into the fortress. The Cossacks immediately assail the gate, slaughter the 6000 Jews except the boys and young men, rape the Catholic women, give the young men a forced Orthodox conversion then kidnap them to become their soldiers. 

Then Tolczyn where there were 2000 Jews and 600 Catholics, including the Polish nobility. The Cossack forces, being incompetent, were severely depleted as Jews went out in night raids and killed their assailants in their sleep. Cossacks secretly convinced the Polish nobility that they wanted to kill only their true enemy, the Jews (come up with the way they communicate/negotiate with each other), and once they do it, they will withdraw from the town. The Polish nobles demanded the Jews surrender their arms, the Jews, knowing they've been betrayed, consider among themselves killing the Poles. The Tolczyn Rebbe pleaded with them not to do it, because if they did, Poland and all its Catholics would rise up against the entire Jewish population and slaughter them similarly in 'a holocaust.' 'We must martyr ourselves for the Jewish people.' The Jews then negotiated to surrender all their property to the Cossacks in exchange for their lives, and drew up a contract which every Jew signed, after which the Cossacks spring a demand that they convert to Orthodox Christianity, and only then would their lives be spared. The community deliberates and the entire community chooses death. The Cossacks leave ten Rabbis alive to extort ransoms from other Jewish communities, and the Rabbis must watch as the entire Tolczyn community is buried alive while the Catholics are forced to man the shovels. 

The town of Homel, where all roughly 1500 Jews are ordered strip naked in the cold and told to choose baptism or death, they all choose death, after which each man has a sword placed in his hand and is told to kill his family. Many of the corpses are raped. 

The town of Narol, where 45,000 people and 12,000 Jews are killed. Levi watches as surviving members of the town feed on the corpses of the dead. 

The town of Czremieniec where hundreds of children are rounded up, slaughtered and thrown to the dogs while parents are forced to watch. 

The town of Brody, mercantile center of 70% Jews, is ready to be martyred, and present themselves without resistance or protest, but Chmielnicki has ordered them to be spared so that they may be taxed at 99% to finance the continued Ukrainian revolution. 

Cain and Levi discuss the historical veracity of what they see - acknowledging the exaggerations of the legends and the further exaggerations of the vision, but also noting that there were massacres in 700 towns and still far more Jewish massacres in two later wars in the next twenty years, the historical record may itself be worse. 

Back in Tolczyn, in the middle of the night, the ten rabbis are allowed nightly escape through assurances to their guards that that the world's Jews would give them special remuneration. Every night they go to the mass grave of their Tolczyn flock, and the souls of the Tolczyn congregation explode from their grave. The women and children ascend to heaven, while the souls of the men fly toward Kyiv. 

At the Golden Gate of Kyiv, Chmielnicki receives Czar Alexis the Quietest, a meek Czar to whom the charismatic Chmielnicki presents to Czar Alexis a honeyed speech about how Ukrainians and Russians are natural brothers, how it is to Ukraine's honor to have Russia as a military ally, and the age of Polish dominance of Ukraine is over. They sign an agreement providing Russian aid to Ukrainian forces, and Chmielnicki privately assures his high council that in the coming time, Ukraine can easily control Russia. Around the Golden Gate of Kyiv, the souls of the dead from Tolczyn fly around it.