The Diary of Yitzhak Lamdan
(Interpretive Summaries of Each Entry)

Interpretive Summary – Sunday night, January 19, 1919, Lutsk

Yitzhak records this brief entry while he confined himself to his room for safety. Word had reached him in the morning that soldiers were seizing every Jew they found in the streets for labor. Yitzhak reports that all the stores were closed that day and the city seemed dead, hardly surprising given that Jews constituted the largest ethnic group in Lutsk. Exact population figures are not available for 1919. But in 1921, when a formal census was conducted, there were approximately 21,000 residents in Lutsk, of whom approximately 14,800, or about 70 percent, were Jews.*

In addition to seizing Jews, the soldiers also imposed a military tax on the city and threatened to kill the leaders of the Jewish community if the money was not raised by the deadline. Yitzhak does not here identify the soldiers carrying out these orders. They were probably Ukrainian troops belonging to forces of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Detachments under the command of Symon Petliura had entered Lutsk on December 20, 1918.*

This arrival in Lutsk formed part of the uprising against the German-backed regime, the Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadskyi. By mid-December 1918, forces ousted the Hetmanate and reestablished the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR). In January 1919, Lutsk was therefore under UPR control. Petliura’s army, however, was far from a cohesive regular force. It included reorganized former Imperial Russian Army units, volunteer detachments, and insurgent units, and suffered from weak organization, uneven discipline, and fragmented command. Whether the troops were carrying out an authorized military command or acting on their own initiative cannot be determined from Yitzhak’s account.

Sources

See "Lutsk," Encylopedia.com, for date Petliura's troops entered Lutsk. For census statistics in 1921, see Lutsk City Council. "Historical Reference about Lutsk." Official Website of Lutsk City Council. https://www.lutskrada.gov.ua/en/pages/history-city. For general discussions, see Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation, especially chapter 4. See also the useful “Ukraine in the Flames: 1917 in Kyiv" by Serhii Plokhii. https://www.huri.harvard.edu/news/ukraine-flames-1917-kyiv-serhii-plokhii Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. For a discussion of Jews and Ukrainian interactions in this period, see Henry Abramson, Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920: A Prayer for the Government.

Interpretive Summary – Saturday night, January 25, 1919, Lutsk

Yitzhak describes feelings of fear and terror especially as a Jew living in Lutsk in the current situation which he compares to a volcano ready to erupt. The Jews are caught in the middle “the target of all arrows and murderous hands on all sides.” No one will stand up for the Jews. In a dizzying series of metaphors, some with biblical or rabbinic resonances, Yitzhak describes the Jews as the scapegoat sent to Azazel, a pot that falls on a stone or vice versa, and a flock of sheep that scatters. He has used such metaphors before to describe the experience of Jews in Exile, in galut (see Aug. 23, 1914), and here they again reflect his Zionist critique of Jewish life in exile: a people scattered, vulnerable, and unable to act collectively. Here Yitzhak doesn’t mince words when he talks about the inability of the Jewish community to discipline itself and organize a response. “Oh, your people is but a flock, a scattered people, a nation of gibberish and chatter…” Instead of rallying as a community, everyone is focused on personal concerns. Quoting the poet of the Haskalah, Yehudah Leib Gordon, Yitzhak brings his critique to a point: the Jews are “not a people, not a community, just a flock.”

Shifting to his own personal situation, Yitzhak indicates he is trying to take his mind off the situation by reading entertaining material. But the distraction is short-lived, and his mind keeps returning to his difficult circumstances. Even so, Yitzhak still feels creative, though, not surprisingly, he is finding the writing slow going and difficult.

In the meantime, Yitzhak also worries also about his brother, Moshe, and his sister Heni and her family. Yitzhak has good reasons to worry about both siblings. Back in May 1917, Yitzhak reported that Moshe left the family in Novohrad Volinskyi and headed back to Dubno for his fitness examination for the Russian military. Whether he was mobilized then and what his fate was in the intervening months following the Bolshevik coup is not known from Yitzhak’s diary at this point.

Yitzhak also has good reason to be concerned about his sister Heni and her family who apparently made their way from Baranivka to Ekaterinoslav sometime between the end of Yitzhak’s third diary in May 1917 and the beginning of his fourth diary in January 1919. News has already reached Yitzhak in Lutsk of the many deaths following what he describes as a “Bolshevik” attack on the city at the end of December and its quick recapture by pro-Ukrainian forces. Historically, the attack was carried out by Makhno’s insurgent forces with local Bolshevik support, while the counterattack was by forces loyal to the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

February 1919

Interpretive Summary – Sunday night, February 2, 1919, Lutsk

A short entry in which Yitzhak describes the apathy that has come over him due to his fear of the external situation and the circulating rumors. Evoking the image of a “trembling leaf” before a storm, a metaphor that echoes a biblical passage from Job, Yitzhak describes how he can’t focus inwardly and instead remains constantly attuned to the outside. The only good news is that a letter arrived from family members also including a letter from his brother Moshe. This is the first indication in his diary that at least part of Yitzhak’s family had already returned to Mlynov. The letters indicate that Moshe and his sister Heni and her family were safe and sound in Ekaterinoslav, despite the attack there by the forces of the Ukrainian anarchist leader Nestor Makhno, whom Yitzhak describes as a group of murderers and robbers who “called themselves Bolsheviks.” Yitzhak still worries about them, though, because word has apparently reached him already that the Bolsheviks managed to drive out the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) forces in late January.

Interpretive Summary – Sunday night, February 9, 1919, Lutsk

Miserable in his current situation, Yitzhak describes himself as living in a thick fog of despair in which the external winds stir up suffocation and stench. His inner life has been overwhelmed by these external circumstances. Internally almost nothing engages him. He has only brief moments of creativity and respite. In passing, he mentions that he is fed up with his teaching work, though it is not clear here whether he is leaving his lodging to teach under the present situation. In describing his feelings, he identifies with a verse from Deuteronomy (28:67) from the curses that God promises will befall the Israelites if they do not remain faithful to God’s instruction. “In the evening I will say ‘if only it were morning’ and to morning [I will say] if only it were evening.” Is Yitzhak simply recalling a verse that does justice to his experience of despair, or does he mean to evoke the larger context of the passage and imply a deeper analogy between his current situation and the curses promised by God to Israel? Yitzhak does not say here.