“We are under orders not to allow any Jews to get out,” he explained to her, good-naturedly.
“Take pity, oh, do take pity,” she was pleading, when her voice was choked off by somebody within.
Every synagogue in town was sacked, the holy ark in many cases being desecrated in the most revolting manner; while the Scrolls of the Law were everywhere cut to ribbons, some of which were wound around cats and dogs. One woman met her awful fate upon scrolls from the Old Synagogue at the hands of a ruffian who had once heard it said that that was the way Titus, the Roman emperor, desecrated the Temple upon taking Jerusalem. Two strong Jews who risked their lives in an attempt to rescue some of the scrolls were seen running through the streets, their precious and rather heavy burden hugged to their hearts. The mob gave chase.
“‘Hear, O Israel!’” one of the two men shrieked, “‘God is God. God is one.’”
But the verse, which will keep evil spirits at a respectful distance from every Jew who utters it, failed to exercise its powers on the rioters. The two men were overtaken and beaten black and blue and the scrolls were cut to pieces.
A white-haired musician, venturing out of his hiding place, begged the mob to spare his violin which he said was older than he; whereupon the instrument was shattered against the old man’s head. On another street in the same section of the city another Jewish fiddler was made to play while his tormentors danced, and when they had finished he had to break the violin with his own hands. Pillows were wrenched from under invalids to be ripped up and thrown into the street. In one tailoring shop a consumptive old man, too feeble to be moved, was found with a bottle of milk in his trembling hands, his only food until his children should find it safe to crawl back to the house.
“You have drunk enough of our milk, you scabby Christ-killer!” yelled a rioter as he knocked the bottle out of the tailor’s hand and hit his head with a flat-iron.
Little Market in front of Boyko’s Court, the home of Clara’s father and mother, glistened with puddles of vodka, in which cats and dogs, overcome by the alcoholic evaporations, lay dead or half-dead. Now and then a drunken rioter would crouch before one of these puddles, dip up a handful of the muddy stuff with his hands and gulp it thirstily, with an inebriate smile of apology to the bystanders. The corner of a lane nearby was piled with brass dust and with broken candle-stick moulds. A horse trough in the rear of the police booth was full of yolks and egg-shells. When the goose market next door to Boyko’s Court was raided some of the fowls were stabbed or had their necks wrung on the spot, while others were driven into the vodka ponds on the square. A hundred geese and ducks went splashing through the intoxicating liquid, fluttering and cackling. A number of rioters formed a cordon preventing them from waddling out and then fell to stabbing them with knives and pitchforks, till every pool of vodka was red.
“Jewish geese, curse them! Jewish geese, curse them!” they snarled.