Pogrom: Encyclopedia II - Pogrom - Pogroms against the Jews

Pogrom - Pogroms against the Jews

Pogrom - In Tsarist Russia

Massive violent attacks against Jews date back at least to the Crusades or earlier (see York Castle), but the term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting only saw use beginning in the 19th century. The first pogrom of this sort is often considered to be the 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odessa after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, in which 14 Jews were killed.^[1] Other sources, such as the Jewish Encyclopedia say the first pogrom was the 1859 riots in Odessa. The term became common after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots swept southern Imperial Russia (modern Poland, Ukraine, Republic of Moldova) in 1881-1884, after Jews were wrongly blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

In the 1880s outbreak, thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families reduced to extremes of poverty; women were sexually assaulted, and large numbers of men, women, and children killed or injured in 166 Russian towns. The new Tsar Alexander III blamed the Jews for the riots and issued a series of harsh restrictions on Jews. The series of pogroms continued for more than three years with at least tacit inactivity and in some cases, support by the authorities.

An even bloodier wave of pogroms broke out in 1903-1906, leaving an estimated 2,000 Jews dead, and many more wounded. The New York Times described the First Kishinev pogrom of Easter, 1903:

"The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia, are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Russian Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews," was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 [Note: the actual number of dead was 47-48] and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews." ^[2]

At least some of the pogroms have been organized^[3] or supported by the Tsarist Russian secret police, the Okhranka. Such facts as the indifference of Russian police and army were duly noted, e.g., during the three-day First Kishinev pogrom of 1903, as well as the preceding inciting anti-Jewish articles in newspapers, a hint that pogroms were in line with the internal policy of Imperial Russia. There is also evidence that the police knew in advance about some pogroms, and chose not to act. Members of the army also actively participated in pogroms in Bialystok (June 1906) and Siedlce (September 1906). The most violently anti-Semitic movement during this period was the Black Hundred, which actively participated in the pogroms.

Even outside of these main outbreaks, pogroms remained common — there were anti-Jewish riots in Odessa in 1859, 1871, 1881, 1886 and 1905 in which hundreds were killed in total.

Pogrom - During the Russian Revolution

Many pogroms accompanied the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. In his book 200 Years Together, Alexander Solzhenitsyn provides the following numbers from Nahum Gergel's 1951 study of the pogroms in the Ukraine: out of estimated 887 mass pogroms, about 40% were perpetrated by the Ukrainian forces led by Symon Petliura, 25% by the Green Army and various nationalist and anarchist gangs, 17% by the White Army, especially forces of Anton Denikin, and 8.5% by the Red Army.

Pogrom - Outside of Russia

Pogroms spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe, and anti-Jewish riots broke out elsewhere in the world. In 1918 and throughout the 1930s there were sporadic pogroms in Poland. In 1927, there were pogroms in Oradea, Romania. In the Americas, there was a pogrom in Argentina in 1919, during the Tragic Week.

In the Arab world there were a number of pogroms, which played a key role in the massive immigration from Arab countries to Israel. In 1945, anti-Jewish rioters in Tripoli, Libya killed 140 Jews, and the Farhud pogrom of Iraq killed between 200 and 400 Jews.

Pogrom - During the Holocaust

Pogroms were also encouraged by the Nazis, especially early in the war before the larger mass killings began. The first of these pogroms was Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, often called Pogromnacht, in which Jewish homes and business were destroyed and up to 200 Jews were killed.

The deadliest pogroms during the Holocaust occurred at the hands of non-Germans. Particularly well-known and relatively well-documented was the Jedwabne pogrom of 1941, in which Polish citizens killed about 380 (according to Instytut Pamięci Narodowej's investigation) to 1,600 (according to Jan Tomasz Gross's book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland) of their Jewish neighbors probably without any German assistance. In the city of Lvov, Ukrainian nationalists organized two large pogroms in July, 1941 in which around 6,000 Jews were murdered. In Lithunaia, anti-Soviet partisan groups engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms on the 25th and 26nd of June, 1941, before Nazi forces even arrived, killing about 3,800 Jews and burning synagogues and Jewish shops. Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was the Iaşi pogrom in Romania, in which as many as 14,000 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police, and military officials.

Even after the end of World War II, there were still isolated pogroms, the most notable being the Polish Kielce pogrom of 1946, in which 40 Jews were killed. The Kielce pogrom was a major factor in the flight of Jews from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War.

The History of anti-Semitism lists a number of anti-Jewish pogroms in various countries.

Pogrom - Influence of pogroms

These first pogroms of the 1880s caused a worldwide outcry and, along with harsh laws, propelled mass Jewish emigration. Two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1914, many going to the United States.

In reaction to the pogroms and other oppressions of the Tsarist period, Jews increasingly became politically active. The General Jewish Labor Union, colloquially known as The Bund, and Jewish participation in the Bolshevik movements were directly influenced by the pogroms. Similarly, the organization of Jewish self-defence leagues (which stopped the pogromists in certain areas during the second Kishinev pogrom) such as Hibbat Zion led naturally into a strong embrace of Zionism especially by Russian Jews.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Pogroms against the Jews", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki