The Jew

Characters

• Nikolai Ilyitch — the colonel who tells the story; a cornet in 1813: A kindly grey-haired colonel recalls how at nineteen he failed to save Girshel from the noose.
• Girshel — a Jewish trader and camp agent: An impoverished trader trying to protect his family in a military camp.
• Sara — Girshel's daughter: A young woman caught at the centre of the conflict.
• Siliavka — the sergeant in the narrator's troop: A burly Ukrainian: he catches Girshel with the camp plan, carries him in, and later fetches the rope.
• the general — the commander of the siege corps: An honest German in Russian service who puts the letter of the law above pity and orders the hanging.
• Fiodor Schliekelmann (Fiodor Karlitch) — the general's adjutant: He writes the report, places the cornet under arrest, and agrees to carry Sara away from her father.