A somewhat hazy charge had been made that these men were Bolshevists, but no trial was given them, and, indeed, the charge was subsequently shown to be untrue. Returning to the scene of execution on the next morning, the troops found that three of their victims were still breathing; these they despatched, and all the thirty-five corpses were then thrown into a pit in an old Jewish cemetery, without an opportunity for decent burial or religious exercises, and with nothing to mark the graves. Up to the time that our Commission came, not a single Jew had been permitted to visit that cemetery; but I was allowed to inspect the scene of this martyrdom, and, when I entered, a great crowd of Jews, who had followed me, also went in. As soon as they reached the burial place of their relatives, they all threw themselves upon the ground, and set up a wailing that still rings in my ears; it expressed the misery of centuries. That same evening I attended divine service at the Pinsk synagogue. The building was crowded to its capacity, the men wedged into almost a solid mass. Those that could not enter were gathered outside. All the Jews of Pinsk were there. This was their first opportunity since April to express their grief in their house of worship. This huge mass cried and screamed until it seemed that the heavens would burst. I had read of such public expression of agony in the Old Testament, but this was the first time that I ever completely realized what the collective grief of a persecuted people was like. To me it expressed the misery of centuries and remains a pitiful memory and symbol of the cry for help that is still going forth from a great part of Europe. Who were these thirty-five Victims? They were the leaders of the local Jewish community, the spiritual and moral leaders of the 5,000 Jews in a city, eighty-five per cent. of the population of which was Jewish; the organizers of the charities, the directors of the hospitals, the friends of the poor. And yet, to that incredibly brutal, and even more incredibly stupid, officer who ordered their execution, they were only so many Jews. Something of the same sort happened at Vilna. There was fighting between the advancing Poles and the retiring Bolsheviki; shots were fired from private houses against the Polish troops, and the Poles, in the anger of their new-found authority, assumed that the Jewish houseowners were guilty. They did not stop to learn the fact that the Jews of Vilna were glad to get rid of Bolshevist rule: they slaughtered or deported all who were suspects--men like Jaffe, that Jewish poet who lived in a world of his own beautiful and harmless dreams, were treated shamefully.