Chmielnicki, Bogdan

(1595–1657)

   Anti-Jewish Ukrainian leader. Chmielnicki was the leader of the 1648 Ukrainian revolt against Polish rule. His followers savagely attacked the Ukrainian Jews, whom they identified with their hated Polish overlords. When the bands of Cossacks and peasants descended on the hapless Jewish communities between May and November 1648, many thousands were butchered, though some were offered the choice between baptism and death. Those Jews who escaped fled westwards. Others were seized by Tatars and sold into slavery. For eight years, from 1648 to 1656, Chmielnicki and his followers spread destruction through the Polish communities. Around seven hundred Jewish communities ceased to exist and 90 per cent of the Jewish population of Podolia and Volhynia was murdered, enslaved or fled. The Poles could give little assistance to the Jews, although the town of Lvov refused to surrender its Jewish inhabitants to Chmielnicki in 1655. This bloody and violent upheaval in central European Jewish life was interpreted by some as the chaos preceding the end of days, and most probably contributed to the fervent support given by the Jews of the area to the messianic claims of SHABBETAI ZEVI. In Jewish history Chmielnicki figures as Chmiel the Wicked, one of the worst oppressors of the Jews. The massacres made a deep impression on European Jewry and formed the subject of many literary works and folklore tales. Later Polish and Ukrainian historians tried to exonerate Chmielnicki and his followers, and to blame the Jews themselves.