An echo of all these horrors resounds in contemporary chronicles and mournful synagogue liturgies. One of the eye-witnesses of the Ukraina massacres, Nathan Hannover, from Zaslav, gives a striking description of it in his historical chronicle _Yeven Metzula_[132] (1653). Sabbatai Kohen, the famous scholar of Vilna,[133] brought this catastrophe to the notice of the Jewish world through a circular letter, entitled _Meghillath Efa_,[134] which was accompanied by prayers in memory of the Polish martyrs. In heartrending liturgies many contemporary rabbis and writers, such as Lipman Heller, Rabbi of Cracow, Sheftel Horovitz, Rabbi of Posen, the scholars Meïr of Shchebreshin[135] (_Tzok ha-`Ittim_,[136] 1650) and Gabriel Shussberg (_Petah Teshuba_,[137] 1653), lament the destruction of Polish Jewry. All these writings are pervaded with the bitter consciousness that Polish Jewry would never recuperate from the blows it had received, and that the peaceful nest in which the persecuted nation had found a refuge was destroyed forever. 4. THE RESTORATION (1658-1697) Fortunately these apprehensions proved to be exaggerated. Though decimated and impoverished, the Jewish population of Poland exceeded in numbers the Jewish settlements of Western Europe. The chief center of Judaism remained in Poland as theretofore, though it became the center of a more circumscribed and secluded section of Jewry. The extraordinary vitality of the "eternal people" was again demonstrated by the fact that the Polish Jews were able, in a comparatively short time, to recover from their terrible losses. No sooner had peace been restored in Poland than they began to return to their demolished nests and to re-establish their economic position and communal self-government, which had been so violently shaken. King John Casimir, having resumed the reins of government, declared that it was his inmost desire to compensate his Jewish subjects, though it be only in part, for the sufferings inflicted upon them and to assist them in recuperating from material ruin. This declaration the King made in the form of a charter bestowing the right of free commerce upon the Jews of Cracow (1661). Various privileges, as well as temporary alleviations in the payment of taxes, were conferred by him upon numerous other Jewish communities which had suffered most from the horrors of the Cossacks and the invasions of the Russians and Swedes.