The Polish side claimed that during the Soviet retreat from
Berdychiv,
Kiev and
Zhytomyr mass hostage-taking of civilians occurred, with hostages forced to go with the Red Army all the way to the rear of the front. Similar claims were made that when returning to Berdychiv the Bolsheviks threw out the sick and wounded from the hospital "disregarding the lives and honor of the medical personnel" Behind Polish lines, Soviet forces hanged suspected enemies on the spot. Ultimately, in the pacification of Ukraine that began during the Soviet counteroffensive in 1920 and which would not end until 1922, the Soviets would take tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. On 7 June, the same day Budyonny's Cossacks, spreading terror in the rear of recently broken Polish frontlines, burned a hospital in
Berdychiv, with 600 patients and
International Red Cross nuns inside. he is said to have behaved like an absolute ruler in the territories controlled by his troops, even conducting public executions. As one Polish officer wrote in a letter to his wife: "This is a person without ideology. The bandit and the murderer and his comrades – subordinates are just like that. They know no shame and are similar to barbarians. [...] I witnessed throwing the cut-off heads of Bolsheviks under his feet. [...] The massacre of Bolsheviks was horrific". White Russian troops led by
Denikin staged
pogroms against Jews in practically every town he captured. In Ukraine at this time, under the leadership of Ukrainian nationalist
Symon Petliura and the
Ukrainian People's Republic, the mass murder of Jews took place on an unprecedented scale, second only to the Holocaust years of World War II.
Isaac Babel, a war correspondent embedded with the
Red Army, in his 1920 diary wrote down many first-hand accounts of atrocities committed by both sides against Jews (Most of them were retreating Red Army in Ukrainian Front). On 5 April 1919 in
Pinsk, Polish Major
Aleksander Narbutt-Łuczyński, after hearing reports that Jewish inhabitants of the city were preparing to riot, panicked and ordered the execution of thirty-five Jews (
Pinsk massacre). Similar hostilities, resulting in fewer casualties, took place in other towns. In Lida soldiers stopped several elderly Jews and cut off their beards with sabres and knives. However, reports of these incidents caused the United States to send a commission led by
Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and Sir
Stuart M. Samuel to investigate. According to
the findings of this Anglo-American Investigating Commission, a total of about 300 Jews lost their lives in all incidents involving Poles. The commission also found that the Polish military and civil authorities did their best to prevent such incidents and their recurrence in the future. The Morgenthau report stated that some forms of discrimination against Jews was of political rather than anti-Semitic nature and specifically avoided use of the term "pogrom," noting that the term was used to apply to a wide range of excesses, and had no specific definition. Sociologist
Tadeusz Piotrowski noted that the Morgenthau Report admitted that the word "pogrom" was inapplicable to the conditions existing within a war zone.
Richard C. Lukas argues that in some places, Jews had made themselves vulnerable by collaborating with Poland's Lithuanian and Soviet enemies. ==Property destruction==