Manya's Story

My grandparents shielded me from this part of their lives in Russia by refusing to answer my questions about "the old country" when I was a child. This book helped me understand the terrible part of my heritage which I knew was there yet not in such a graphic way.

For Jews in pre-revolutionary Russia, to be drafted in Czar Nicholas' army could be a death warrant. Not only did one have to suffer a seven-year commitment to servitude, but one had to suffer overt anti-Semitism--the kind that swept villages and left hundreds dead in their wake. Thus it is understandable that a key figure in this non-fiction tale--Israel Abramson, the author's father--chose to pull out some teeth and sever the tendons of several toes to avoid the dreaded service. He came to the little shtetle of Talne in Ukraine to manage Boris Petrofsky's drugstore after Boris was drafted. There in the Pale of Settlement--the area to which Russian Jews were confined from 1794 to 1917--he met Manya Polevois and her family. It was the fall of 1917, six months after Czar Nicholas had been ousted and replaced by the Socialist provisional government. Socialist Alexander Kerensky and Prince Lvov were running Russia's World War I effort, which was going badly. The Russians were losing, and young boys were ruthlessly drafted and sent to the front without training or experience to die. In October, Lenin returned to Russia, and in November, Ukraine's parliament refused to turn over power to the Bolshviks, establishing instead the Ukrainian National Republic. For the first time in their history, Ukraine's Jews were promised a measure of freedom, but instead, pogroms followed. In March 1918, Russia and Germany signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia conceded Ukraine to the Germans. Israel, fearful of pogroms, came running to the Polevois family for assurance. Just then the German officers walked in and commandeered the Polevois home. They remained until November, 1918, when Germany conceded Ukraine to Russia and the forces of Simon Petlura. In the armed Ukrainian-Russian conflict that followed, Petlura's soldiers conducted wholesale massacres of Jews. The bright spot that year in Talne were the weddings of Ruchel Polevois, to a Pavlusha in early May, and of Manya to Israel Abramson, on May 30, 1918. As a wedding gift, Yosel Polevois gave a fully stocked drugstore in nearby Manistritch to his son-in-law. The summer was idyllic, but by the following spring, pogroms struck again. I will not reveal the rest of this dramatic story for young adults, but it was after many ordeals and still more pogroms that Manya and Israel determined to flee to America. The book tells the frightening tale of anti-Semitism in early twentieth century Russia and Ukraine--very well. --Alyssa A. Lappen

This is a book that tells a rare story...the Russian revolution and a Jewish family's fight for survival in pogrom torn Ukraine. There are not many books that cover this subject, and Bettyanne Gray tells it better than most. It has the flavor of the rural Russian shtetl lifestyle, while at the same time describes the destruction wrought on Jewish communities by the Red, White, and Ukrainian armies vying for supremacy during the revolution. A quick but very good read. END