In loving memory of Sarah Chaya Krikst (1901-1918). Raped & murdered by the Cossacks. 16 or 17 years old. I am Wendy Chaya. I am named after her. My son Sam did a school project in 2005 and interviewed my aunt Sarah who told him “When my mother’s sister was just a girl, 16 or 17, she worked for a seamstress, fixing clothes. One night the seamstress had too much work and asked Sarah if she could stay at her house to help her complete it. She agreed and complied with the seamstress’s wishes. In the middle of the night Cossacks attacked and raided the house. They raped and murdered Sarah and then burned the house down”. I did not know about this earth-shattering event before this. Sarah lived in what was known as the Pale of Settlement, a western region of the Russian Empire that existed from 1791 - 1917. My family came from the region now known as Lithuania.

The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation. Wikipedia