What could he do? He saw now why the baron had commanded him to sell to the peasants …. they certainly did have money. He had been one of those who had climbed the fence and seen the peasants murdering their overseers. He added one and one and knew that this fortune of money had been stolen from the baron’s house. He added still another digit and concluded that the baron would like nothing better than that he, Itzik the Jew, should fleece these ignorant people out of their fortune and later be found at home with the piles of money on his person. In short, he saw a pogrom in the making.

His first desire was to flee. Leave his wagon, pans and all, and streak for the fence and get away. But he had a family in the village outside and he could not bear to desert them at a time like this. And there was another reason why he did not simply run away. He was not a fool, this Itzik. He knew what was going on in Europe for he had, in his travels on his wagon, seen many sections of the country, an opportunity denied to most people in those days. And in his travels he had been often degraded and spat upon for being a Jew, and he had come to a time in his life when he was sick with it all. And this predicament now seemed to him to be the final indignity in a life of indignities.

So with the great bitterness that comes when a man must display his rebellion, he went about among the huts and took down the king’s pictures wherever he could find them, and in return gave his wares to the peasants until his wagon was empty and in his pouch lay more than a million Kroner. Then he got onto the wagon, took his seat, and drove out of the estate. On the way he saw no one and arrived at home unmolested.

Night fell. He ate his supper, said long and special prayers, and lay down to sleep. Around him slept his children, and beside him his wife. He waited for the sound of horses’ hoofs and the smell of burning.

And when it was very dark he heard the hoofs coming. He ran out of his house and warned his neighbors, who bolted their doors and shuttered their windows. Then he ran back into his house and did the same. In a few minutes the cavalry pounded into the town and started smashing the houses of the Jews. First one house and then another, with the women screaming, and two of them being raped on their doorsteps.

Then they came to Itzik’s house and smashed down his door. His roof started to burn. He tried to hold his family around him but the soldiers ripped away his children and spitted them like little pigs, and they raped his wife three times, and him they clouted on the head with bayonets and left for dead.