10 ADVENTURES IN IDEALISM 



supplied every one with any kind of tool or weapon of 

 defense they could lay hands on, and they assigned 

 groups of the volunteers to places in the poorest and 

 most crowded districts of the city where they expected 

 the Czar's mercenaries to do their worst and where, 

 on account of their extreme poverty, the victims could 

 not buy police protection after the manner of the more 

 wealthy Jewish citizens. 



And one Sunday afternoon the fifth day of Pass- 

 over and the first of Easter while my husband was 

 visiting me, the Pogrom broke out. We heard shrill 

 whistling, the smashing of windows, the wild clamor 

 of the hoodlums, and, above all, the shouts: "Kill! kill 

 the Jews!" My husband rushed out of the house, and 

 that was the last I saw of him until three days later I 

 visited him in the Odessa prison. He and his fellow- 

 students were nursing the wounds they had received 

 from the hoodlums, while they were trying to protect 

 the homes that had been attacked by the ruffians. The 

 police had been out the whole first day of the massacre 

 defending the hoodlums. They had clashed with the 

 organized "Self -De fence" in several sections of the 

 city, and bloody fights had taken place between the 

 Pogromschiki and the Jewish defenders. The police, 

 in their righteous anger, arrested every one of the 

 young Jewish students and flung them into jail. 



Despite the pressure brought to bear by the fathers 

 of the students, a number of whom were wealthy and 

 influential citizens, it was at least two weeks before 



