(Victims of a pogrom perpetrated by Ukrainian forces in Khodorkiv, 1919)

According to Webster’s dictionary a “pogrom” is an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  It is a Russian word meaning to “wreak havoc, to demolish violently.”  Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries. The first such incident to be labeled a pogrom is believed to be anti-Jewish rioting in Odessa in 1821. As a descriptive term, “pogrom” came into common usage with extensive anti-Jewish riots that swept the southern and western provinces of the Russian Empire in 1881–1884, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. 

One of the most impactful pogroms took place in Kishinev located in the southwest corner of Imperial Russia in April 1903.  It resulted in the death of 49 Jews, an untold number of Jewish women were raped, and 1,500 Jewish homes were damaged. This sudden rush of hoodlum violence — prompted by accusatory rumors of Jewish ritual murder — quickly became a talisman of imperial Russian brutality against its Jews. More than that, the incident brought the word pogrom to the world stage and set off reverberations that changed the course of Jewish history for the next century.

Pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19^th and early 20^th century became the impetus for Jewish immigration to the United States.  Between 1880 and 1924 over 2,000,000 Jews immigrated to the United States to escape persecution and poverty.  My own grandparents left their small village north of Kyiv in 1905 on arriving at Ellis Island and settling in the New York area. 

(A funeral held for desecrated Torah scrolls following the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, in which 49 Jews were murdered and hundreds of women raped)

For those who have difficulty imagining what a pogrom is or looks like I refer them to the film “The Fixer” based on the novel of the same name by Bernard Malamud. THE FIXER was based on an infamous case known as the “Beilis case” or the “Beilis trial” of 1913, in which the mutilated corpse of a Christian boy was found in a cave outside Kiev in 1911, and it became the cause célèbre for myriad virulent antisemitic groups to propagate widespread persecution of Jews. A Jewish laborer named Menahem Mendel Beilis (Yacov Bok in the film and novel) was arrested on ludicrous trumped-up charges for ritualistically extracting the child’s blood to be used in Passover matzos and it led to his imprisonment and torture –a prelude to further pogroms and the coming Bolshevik Revolution. In a highly publicized trial akin to the Russian version of the Dreyfus affair, Beilis was ultimately acquitted by an all-Christian jury.

The latest use of the term pogrom has sparked controversy when it was applied to the devastating actions of Hamas terrorists perpetrated on October 7, 2024, against Israel.  The end result  was 1,180 people killed, of which 797 were civilians, including 36 children and 379 security forces.  A further,  3,400 civilians and soldiers were wounded, and 251 civilians and soldiers were taken captive (74 later died in captivity or were confirmed dead).  Hamas’ savagery fits the definition of the term “pogrom” with all the elements of violence, sexual attack, and antisemitism.

(Symon Petliura, a 1920s Ukrainian statesman blamed for the murder of 50,000 Jewish compatriots)

In his latest book IN THE MIDST OF CIVILIZED EUROPE: THE POGROMS OF 1918-1921 AND THE ONSET OF THE HOLOCAUST  Jeffrey Veidlinger tackles the pogrom-like violence in western Belorussia (Belarus) and Poland’s Galicia province (now West Ukraine), that resulted in the murder of over a hundred thousand Jews between 1918 and 1921. According to Veidlinger, apart from murders, “approximately 600,000 Jewish refugees were forced to flee across international borders, and millions more were displaced internally.  About two-thirds of all Jewish houses and over half of all Jewish businesses in the region were looted or destroyed.  The pogroms traumatized the affected communities for at least a generation and set off alarm bells around the world.”

The perpetrators of pogroms organized locally, sometimes with government and police encouragement. They raped, murdered their Jewish victims, and looted their property. During the civil war that followed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists, Polish officials, and Red Army soldiers perpetrated these massacres blaming the Jews for the turmoil and destruction of World War I and the ensuing Russian Revolution.  At the time reports of this violence were published in the press and many warned that the Jews were in danger of extermination – a prediction that would come to fruition in the Nazi imposed Holocaust between 1939-1945.

Veidlinger relies on long-neglected materials that include recently discovered eyewitness accounts, trial records, and government orders concluding that the genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust.  He explains how and why so many groups believed that the murder of Jews was a suitable reaction to their perceived problems, allowing “pogroms” to be seen as one of the defining moments of the 20th century.

(Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger)

The development of pogroms as a threat to the existence of Jews came to a stage.  First, the reaction to the assassination of Alexander II which Russian newspapers and right-wing Christians blamed the Jews.  Next is the results of the Russo-Japanese war which set off a wave of pogroms as the Russian people could not accept defeat.  The situation was further exacerbated by the 1905 Revolution allowing the Black Hundreds and individuals within the Tsarist police to unleash devastating pogroms.  It took until 1906 for the pogroms to subside.  The pogroms unleashed between 1903-1906 helped model behavioral patterns that were further refined with each wave of unrest.  Tensions were heightened with the appearance of THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION, first circulated by the Black Hundreds in 1903 it would be widely disseminated across Russia (and Europe) accusing the Jews of a global conspiracy to take control of world finances and manipulate government leaders.  The next stage in the development and implementation of pogroms was a result of World War I where Jews were accused of financing the German war machine and supporting Russia’s arch enemy, Germany.  Rumors of Jewish betrayal throughout the war led to their removal by Russian troops from front line areas leading to thousands of Jews imprisoned and others becoming refugees forced out of their homes and sent to other parts of the empire or forced to emigrate elsewhere when possible to eradicate what was perceived as a world Jewish revolutionary movement.

One of Veidlinger’s most important themes revolves around what happened to Jews in Ukraine during World War II, having its roots in what happened to Jews in the same geographic area in the post-World War I era.  The massacres established violence against Jews as an acceptable response to the excesses of Bolshevism due to the unrelenting exposure to bloodshed which habituated local populations to bloodshed and barbarism.  When the Germans arrived in 1941 they found a decades-old killing ground where the mass murder of innocent Jews was an acceptable reality.

Veidlinger correctly points out how Jews could not escape victimhood as after the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was signed in March 1918 by the Bolsheviks and Germans, the Jews would once again found themselves as victims.  As the Germans occupied Ukraine the Bolsheviks accused them of collaboration with the enemy as well as being members of the bourgeois class.  The Germans accused them of being Bolshevik sympathizers and engaging in violent attacks against German officials.  The Jews were victims of attacks from both sides further reinforcing the concept that it was acceptable to beat up and kill Jews.  Things grew worse when the Bolsheviks created the “Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption” (Cheka) under Felix Dzerzhinsky which employed torture and terror to root out the opposition.  Interestingly, with so many Bolshevik leaders with Jewish backgrounds it was easy to spread lies pertaining to them by opposition to the new Soviet regime.  The remnants of the central powers, the White Army, the Black Hundreds all developed strong rationalizations to unleash further pogroms.

(Leon Trotsky)

With the collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian empire the nationalist goals of the Poles for their own nation ensued.  Joseph Pilsudski, a Polish military figure and statesman called for a multi-ethnic Polish state and became the first Chief of State for the new country.  However, for Jews the situation was complex as they once again were caught in the middle of divergent forces and soon became victims of pogramatic violence as Poles, Ukranians, and others fought for control of cities within the new Ukrainian and Polish republics.  Violence in Lviv set a new pattern as soldiers deliberately targeted Jews in their homes and businesses with no apparent military objective.  This seemed different as now soldiers were added to gangs of ruffians and local discontented types who openly attacked Jews.  This spread across Poland and Galicia resulting in over 130 pogroms against Jews by soldiers with the general population participating in the violence as crowds cheered them on.  Once again Jews were caught in the middle as a Ukrainian Republic had been proclaimed that seemed to be more tolerant of Jews when compared to the new Polish state.

The author does an excellent job exploring in insightful detail four of the 85 attacks on Jewish life and property between January and March 1919.  The four include pogroms in Ovruch, two in Zhytomyr, and Proskuriv.  What set them apart from previous pogroms was that they were not necessarily an unprompted spree committed spontaneously by unruly soldiers rampaging through civilian neighborhoods, but part of a protracted reign of terror perpetrated by officers, or leaders who achieved some military control acting under the authority of the state military.  They became a watershed for Jews because the Ukrainian government when it came to pass was predicated on the principle of minority rights and national autonomy and their lack of action showed they could not protect them.  For Jews targeted for supporting  Bolsheviks it betrayed the trust Jews had in their government. 

(A 1934 edition by the Patriotic Publishing Company of Chicago)

The problem that emerges in all four pogroms is that the high minded ideals of the Ukrainian cabinet and intellectual elites were not shared by the rest of the military leadership.  Instead, the officers and soldiers, many of whom had been poisoned by the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Imperial Russian army which they had served and by prejudices learned in their villages, continued to view Jews as speculators stealing the wealth of the Ukrainian people, as enemies of the church, and the agents of Bolshevism.  It was a belief system that reverberated throughout the region to the detriment and of the well-being of Jews.  This would continue in the battles for Kyiv, Fastiv and other areas as the White army with their Cossacks entered the picture.

Fastiv is another example of the horrors Jews faced in September and October 1919 as the White army entered the fray resulting in the death of over 8000 Jews, some the result of outright murder and the rest the effects of hunger, exposure and the lack of any medical care.  The Whites wanted to eradicate the Jewish population anywhere they could find them.  The Whites were made up of former Tsarist officers and soldiers, along with the Cossacks just enhanced the terror Jews faced under the leadership of Anton Denikin, a former peasant and disgruntled Tsarist officer.  The former Tsarist officers saw the Jews as the progenitors of Bolshevism and as an internal enemy whose perfidy had led to Russia’s defeat in the Great War.  Their goal was to restore the Tsarist empire sans Jews.

(Anton Denikin)

As previously mentioned the Jews were once again caught in the crossfire between the Red army, the White army, the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and the new Polish nation.  With the settlement at the Versailles conference unclear when it came to borders and the fate of Ukraine, it left an opening for these disparate elements to continue to fight and for Jews who grew confused as to whom to support as the political situation was a minefield.  The battlefield consisted of Whites fighting Reds, the Red Army fighting Poland, Poland fighting the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and sorted warlords seizing property and randomly killing Jews as opportunities presented themselves.  Throughout Ukraine and border areas with the new nation of Poland, government control of territory was always tenuous giving anti-Semites the perfect opportunity to engage in pogroms.  Fueled by conspiracy theories and past learning under the Tsar and the fact that Bolshevik leaders had Jewish backgrounds the plight of Jews seemed preordained.  As Veidlinger describes the many pogroms with its executions, shootings, rapes, seizures of property, and outright torture physically and psychologically one has to wonder how depraved the perpetrators of these atrocities were.

Veidlinger sums up the plight of the Jews very clearly: “Jewish civilians were singled out for persecution by virtually everyone.  The Bolsheviks despised them as bourgeois nationalist; the bourgeois nationalists branded them Bolsheviks; Ukrainians saw them as agents of Russia; Russians suspected them of being German sympathizers; and Poles doubted their loyalty to the newly founded Polish Republic.  Dispersed in urban pockets and insufficiently concentrated in any one contiguous territory, Jews were unable to make a credible claim to sovereignty, no party trusted them.  Regardless of one’s political inclination, there was always a Jew to blame.”

The concept of scapegoating stands out.  If one follows the plight of Jews in Europe since the Middle Ages , the Jew was the perfect target.  No matter what century we are speaking about pogroms would draw local people, at times the victim’s neighbors in what the author describes as a “carnivalesque atmosphere” of inebriated singing and dancing.  The perpetrators were often young peasants who had suffered greatly during World War I, who lacked any guidance from their elders who also participated in the bloodshed.

(1919 map of Ukraine)

As the Nazis rose to power and consolidated their rule in Germany in the 1930s the situation for Jews grew untenable.  The Nazi invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union created an invitation for “liberated peoples” to take out their frustrations against Jews.  The Nazis encouraged  anti-Semitism in the Ukraine taking advantage of its previous history of persecuting Jews.  In 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, told subordinates “not to hinder attempts of local anti-communist and anti-Jewish circles to the newly occupies territories to engage in cleansing activities. On the contrary, they should be carried out and intensified, if necessary, and channeled in the right direction, but without leaving a trace.”  Heydrich would organize the Wannsee Conference where the decision labeled the ‘Final Solution” was reached. 

(Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SD (Security Service) and Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia.. Place uncertain, 1942)

Pogroms broke out throughout the Ukraine in 1941 as the Nazis were aided by those who had participated in the horrors that took place between 1918 and 1921, and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.  The Germans would incite the Ukrainians by equating Jews with Bolsheviks, drawing upon the same language which peasants and Cossack militias had massacred Jews twenty years earlier.  The most deadly massacre took place in Kyiv on September 26, 1941, when Jews were marched to an open meadow, part of the Babyn Yar system were 33, 771 Jews were killed over thirty-six hours.  By the spring of 1942, the genocide of the Jews of Ukraine was complete, with over 500,000 Jews, , one-third of the prewar population murdered.  The pogroms Veidlinger describes in his deeply researched monograph had been mostly spontaneous and scattered, but once the Nazis crossed into Poland, the Ukraine, and the Soviet Union the Holocaust became increasingly systematic.   The intellectual preparation lingered from twenty years before, became a reality.  The precedent of1918-1921 came to fruition.  The script of twenty years before was reenacted.

In the end Veidlinger’s scholarly presentation concluded that few of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were punished when compared to their victims.  Some higher ups escaped, some were convicted, and many lesser accomplices had been sentenced to death by tribunals or vigilantes, but the reality is clear, as Veidlinger states, “the value of Jewish life had been debased.”

(Bodies of the Jewish victims of the pogrom in Orvuch, Ukraine, in February of 1919)