A wail of such wildness arises that it does not seem to come from a human throat.
At the command, the Cossacks jumped to the altar, seized the Rabbi, the cantor, and grabbed blindly for the others.
“Have pity!—Not me—not me! My husband is innocent. Jacob—” thus they screamed.
The leader counted: “One, two, three, four, five—Bring me a rope!” Then a voice yelled from the woman’s balcony: “I’ll bring the rope—right away!” She swung her arms and beat her breast, and then leaped from the railing to the stone floor below. Still she gasped: “I’ll bring the rope right away!”
“Then merely the eleven,” said the leader sharply. “But quick—quick!” Upon the eight pillars the Cossacks quickly put up a scaffold.
While the women wept and cried for mercy, the men, dressed in their grave clothes, cowered in the corners and covered their heads in order to shut out the sight.
And now the congregation called aloud seven times—as in the hour of death—the ancient words of their faith: “Hear Israel! the Eternal, our God, the eternally One!”
That was their salvation, their consolation, their faith. And the shrieks of the dying deadened the voice of prayer—and the words of both were the same.
The murderers stamped upon the altar, broke the sacred shrines, threw the roll of the Torah upon the floor, and stole the gold and silver.
And still the Jews prayed on, the immortal death-prayer of their race for the eleven who were hanged. Then the Cossacks’ leader commanded silence; they should leave the city at once, because they had betrayed the city to the Germans. Upon the moment, just as they were, they should go, men, women, children, not one should be permitted to escape.