Misplaced Pages

Kiev pogroms (1919): Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 01:51, 5 June 2007 editIrpen (talk | contribs)32,604 edits too many problems, see talk← Previous edit Latest revision as of 09:40, 5 December 2024 edit undoSalmoonlight (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users20,152 edits removed Category:White Terror; added Category:White Terror (Russia) using HotCat 
(183 intermediate revisions by 87 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Short description|Series of anti-Jewish attacks in Kiev, Ukraine in 1919}}
{{noncompliant}}
{{Infobox civilian attack
The '''Kiev pogrom of 1919''' refers to a series of ] ] in various places in and around ] carried out by ] and the ].<ref name="Frankel">Benjamin Frankel, ''A Restless Mind: Essays in Honor of Amos Perlmutter''. Published by Routledge, pg. 272 </ref>
| title = Kiev pogroms
__NOTOC__
| partof = ]
⚫ ]
| image = Pogrom-victims-Kiev(1919).jpg
⚫ *], ], ]: a pogrom in which 45 Jews were massacred, many were severely wounded, and 35 Jewish women were raped by army insurgents.<ref>Michael L. Brown, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood. "More Tears". Published by Destiny Image, Inc. Pg. 105. </ref>
⚫ | caption = Pogrom victims in Alexander Hospital, Kiev, 1919. Credit: Elias Tcherikower
| location = ], ], ]
| coordinates =
| target = Primarily ]
| date = 1919
| time =
| timezone =
| type = Decapitation, Burning, Stabbing, Shooting
| fatalities = Unspecified number
| injuries = Unspecified number
| perps = Ukrainian nationalists, ] and ]
| susperps =
| weapons =
}}
The '''Kiev pogroms of 1919''' refers to a series of anti-] ] in various places around ] carried out by ] ] troops. The series of events concern the following districts:
⚫ *], June 23, 1919: a pogrom in which 45 Jews were massacred, many were severely wounded, and 35 Jewish women were raped by army insurgents.<ref name="Brown105">{{cite book |author=Michael L. Brown |title=Our Hands Are Stained with Blood |chapter=More Tears |year=1992 |publisher=Destiny Image |page=105 |isbn=9781560430681 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y2PseStkG3sC&q=Skvira |via=Google Books, preview.}}</ref>
⚫ *], August, 1919: where a pogrom made its way through the ] with an unspecified number of Jewish men murdered and Jewish women raped.
⚫ *] district, 18–20 October 1919. In the pogrom carried out by Cossack and ] troops, 14 Jews were massacred, 9 wounded, and 15 Jewish women and girls were raped by units under the command of Struk in three days of carnage.<ref>], Reflections of a Post-Auschwitz Christian. On meeting Kurt Waldheim. Pg. 136 </ref>


==Immediate reactions==
⚫ *]: In August, 1919, a pogrom made its way through the ] named in honor of Justina, wife of a Russian nobleman. An unspecified number of Jewish men were murdered and Jewish women raped.
The leaders of the ] issued orders condemning the pogroms, but these were largely unheeded due to widespread antisemitism.<ref name="Frankel">Benjamin Frankel, ''A Restless Mind: Essays in Honor of Amos Perlmutter''. Published by Routledge, pg. 272 </ref> ] had spoken out against pogroms in March, and in June, the Bolsheviks assigned some funds for victims of pogroms. However, the events received little coverage in the Bolshevik press.<ref name="Frankel" />


==Escalation of hostility==
⚫ *Ivankov district of Kiev: Between 18 and 20 October 1919, in the pogrom carried out by Cossack and ] troops, 14 Jews were massacred, 9 wounded, and 15 Jewish women and girls were raped by units under the command of Struk, ally of ] in three days of carnage.<ref>Harry James Cargas, Reflections of a Post-Auschwitz Christian. On meeting Kurt Waldheim. Pg. 136 </ref>
{{CSS image crop|Image=Daily Ardmoreite Oklahoma Paper Decemeber 2, 1919.pdf|bSize=860|cWidth=325|cHeight=342|Description=People in NYC protesting against the violent pogroms
'''Caption Reads:'''
''Thousands of Jews marched in the great New York Parade to a mass meeting of protest against recent pogroms in Ukraine, where, speakers said, 120,000 Jews have been massacred. In the parade a service flag was carried with 8,000 stars for Jews killed in service of the United States.''


-December 2, 1919;
==Reactions==
''Daily Ardmoreite (Oklahoma Paper)''|Location=right|oLeft=262|oTop=143|Alt=Thousands of Jews marched in the great New York Parade to a mass meeting of protest against recent pogroms in Ukraine, where, speakers said, 120,000 Jews have been massacred. In the parade a service flag was carried with 8,000 stars for Jews killed in service of the United States.}}
Leaders of the ] issued orders condemning the pogroms, but these were largely left unenacted due to the widespread anti-Jewish feeling.<ref name="Frankel" />
⚫ The Kiev pogroms of 1919 proved the first of many such events.<ref name="Gitelman">Zvi Y. Gitelman, '''' Pg. 65-70. Indiana University Press, 2001. {{ISBN|0253338115}}.</ref> There were a total of ] around that time, in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred. The pogroms were marked by utmost cruelty and face-to-face brutality. Thousands of women were raped. Hundreds of ]ekh were pillaged, and Jewish neighborhoods were left in ruins. According to some estimates, overall, in the pogroms of 1918-1921, half a million Jews were left homeless.<ref>Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain, and the Russian Revolution. Published by Routledge, pg. 87 </ref>


Of these 53.7% were committed by ]'s Ukrainian nationalists, the remainder by troops from White Volunteer Army (17%), the Bolsheviks' Red Army (2.3%), or local bands. These estimates include deaths due to massacre-induced disease or starvation. More recent estimates based on newly available Russian records judge the percentage killed by the White Volunteer Army to be much higher, perhaps as high as 50 percent."<ref name="Gitelman" /><ref>Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: genocide in the twentieth century. Published by Cambridge University Press. Page 45 </ref>
] had spoken out against pogroms in March, and in June, the Bolsheviks assigned some funds for victims of pogroms. However, the events received little coverage in the Bolshevik press.<ref name="Frankel" />


== Background and causes==
==Aftermath==
The Kiev Pogroms of 1919 were splurges of looting, raping, and murder chiefly directed against the shops, factories, homes, and persons of the Jews.<ref>William C. Fuller, ''The Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia'', 2006</ref> ] had the largest concentration of Jews in Russia (part of the Russian organized ]) at the time and was also the scene of the bitterest and most prolonged fighting between Jews and non-Jews. This is important because according to research there is a positive correlation on a broad scale between the number of Jews, in a given place, and an increased likelihood of pogroms, and they become more likely when long-term subordination and superordination of social groups is in dispute.<ref>Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, "Pogroms in Russia: Explanations, Comparisons, Suggestions", Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 17</ref>
⚫ The Kiev pogrom of 1919 proved the first of many such events. It is estimated that a total of 1,326 - or up to 2,000 - pogroms took place in the Ukraine alone, in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred. The pogroms were marked by utmost cruelty and face-to-face brutality. Thousands of women were raped. Hundreds of ]ekh were pillaged, and Jewish neighborhoods were left in ruins. According to some estimates, overall, in the pogroms of 1918-1921, half a million Jews were left homeless;<ref>Fannie Fern Andrews, The Holy Land Under Mandate. Published 1931, Houghton Mifflin, pg. 295 </ref> <ref>Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain, and the Russian Revolution. Published by Routledge, pg. 87 </ref> and together with those who died of wounds or as a result of illnesses contracted during the pogroms, a total of about 150,000 Jews perished.<ref>Zvi Y. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Pg. 70.
</ref>


The Kiev Pogroms of 1919 were not the first of their kind in Ukraine, and other instances of violence occurred and were carried out against Jews in and around Kiev in the 1880s ] and the first decade of the 20th century ]. Ultimately the tension from these events never really subsided, it laid just beneath the surface and could be seen as a cause of further violence. However the Jewish massacres in Ukraine in the year 1919, which set the whole land ablaze, can not be compared with these previous pogroms due to its essence and scope. The Kiev Pogroms of 1919 were the bloodiest and the most atypical of the pogroms in Ukraine, taking place after the fall of the imperial regime and under conditions of bitter strife, where violence of every kind was basically unrestrained. Fueled by ] and propaganda against the Jews, the massacre of the Jews in Kiev, in 1919, was essentially a method for ].<ref>Elias Hiefetz, The Slaughter of the Jews In the Ukraine In 1919, 1921, preface</ref>
Apparently, the new ] ideology of tolerance (see: Lenin, "On Anti-Jewish Pogroms"<ref>Lenin's March 1919 speech ''On Anti-Jewish Pogroms'' («О погромной травле евреев»: ], {{audio|Lenin - Anti-Jewish Pogroms.ogg|audio}})</ref>) was very short-lived,<ref>Arnold Davidovich Margolin, Ukraine and Policy of the Entente. Published 1977 L. A. Margolena, pg. 195 </ref> <ref> Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Yivo Annual of Jewish Social Science. Published 1983 by Yiddish Scientific Institute, pg. 241 </ref> and as early as 1918 the Russian Jews became victims of vicious attacks.{{fact}} The scourge of pogroms which erupted in January 1919 in the northwest province of ] spread during February and March to the cities, towns, and villages <ref name = "Midlarsky">Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: genocide in the twentieth century. Published by Cambridge University Press, pg. 46-47. </ref> of many other regions of Ukraine.<ref>Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Jews and Other Minor Nationalities Under the Soviets. Published 1928 by Vanguard Press, pg. 54 </ref> After ] it was the turn of Ovruc, northwest of Kiev. In Tetiev on March 25, approximately 4,000 Jews were murdered, half in a synagogue set ablaze by Cossacks. Then Vashilkov (April 6 and 7).<ref>Elias Tcherikower, "The Pogroms in Ukraine in 1919" originally in Yiddish, YIVO Institute, 1965 </ref> In Dubovo (June 17) 800 Jews were decapitated in assembly-line fashion.<ref name = "Midlarsky" /> According to David A. Chapin, the town of Proskurov (later ]), near the city of Sudilkov, “was the site of the worst atrocity committed against Jews this century before the Nazis.” In 1919, during the ], Petliura and his band of nationalists under Hetman Semossenko exterminated a large percentage of the Jewish district of Proskurov, where more than 10,000 Jews were massacred on ] (]) from three p.m. till next Sunday.<ref>Grossmanproject.net: The Pogroms </ref> <ref>For more information on the Russian pogroms against the Jews: I. Michael Aronson’s book, Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.</ref> <ref>Й.Петровский, ОБЩЕСТВО "ЕВРЕЙСКОЕ НАСЛЕДИЕ". Серия "Еврейский Архив": Выпуск 5, Москва, 1996 г. </ref> Massive pogroms continued until 1921.<ref>Arno Joseph Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Published by Princeton University Press, pg. 516 </ref>

The tsarist regime attempted to "divert the attention of the socially and politically discontented masses in another direction, the direction of least resistance."<ref name="Elias Hiefetz 1919">Elias Hiefetz, The Slaughter of the Jews In the Ukraine In 1919, 1921, chapter 1.</ref> Essentially it was a way of redirecting popular discontent away from the government and onto a visible minority group. They did this by inciting the lower classes against the Jews who were largely defenseless, and who, they also proposed, were responsible for the misery of the people as a whole. The Jews were depicted as the exploiters of the people, as the leeches of society, who drained the blood of the worker and robbed him of the bounty of his economic activity.<ref name="Elias Hiefetz 1919"/>

Another cause of the Kiev Pogroms of 1919, was economic difficulties and changes in the urban environment. Economic difficulties and political strife tended to increase the probability of pogroms and this was certainly the case with Ukraine which was in a state of conflict and transition during the ] and afterwards when it had separated from ]. The stress of changes in the urban environment also provided fertile ground for violence against Jews, stresses such as immigration, not only by Jews from other parts of the empire but by outsiders in general made the pogroms possible.<ref>Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, "Pogroms in Russia: Explanations, Comparisons, Suggestions", Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 18</ref>


==See also== ==See also==
*] * ]
*] * ]
*]


==Footnotes== ==Footnotes==
{{reflist|2}}
<div class="references-small">
⚫ <references/>
</div>


⚫ ==Further references==
==References==
* Sokolievka/Justingrad: A Century of Struggle and Suffering in a Ukrainian Shtetl, pg. 78 * Harold Henry Fisher: The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration
* Harold Henry Fisher: The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration * William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921. Published 1935 by Macmillan company pg. 230
* R. Weaver, etc., The Tamarack Review. Published 1982, * David J. Mitchell, 1919: Red Mirage. Published 1970, Cape, 249
* Meyer Wolfe Weisgal, Zionist Organization of America: Theodor Herzl, a Memorial, Published 1929, New Palestine, pg. 289 * Zvi Y. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Pg. 67.
* I. Michael Aronson, ''Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia'', University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.
* William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921. Published 1935 by Macmillan company pg. 230
* David J. Mitchell, 1919: Red Mirage. Published 1970, Cape, 249
* Zvi Y. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Pg. 67.


{{Massacres of Jews}}


] ]
] ]
] ]
] ]
]
]
]
] ]
]
]
]
]
]
]

Latest revision as of 09:40, 5 December 2024

Series of anti-Jewish attacks in Kiev, Ukraine in 1919
Kiev pogroms
Part of Pogroms during the Russian Civil War
Pogrom victims in Alexander Hospital, Kiev, 1919. Credit: Elias Tcherikower
LocationKiev, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire
Date1919
TargetPrimarily Jews
Attack typeDecapitation, Burning, Stabbing, Shooting
DeathsUnspecified number
InjuredUnspecified number
PerpetratorsUkrainian nationalists, White Armies and Don Cossacks

The Kiev pogroms of 1919 refers to a series of anti-Jewish pogroms in various places around Kiev carried out by White Volunteer Army troops. The series of events concern the following districts:

  • Skvyra, June 23, 1919: a pogrom in which 45 Jews were massacred, many were severely wounded, and 35 Jewish women were raped by army insurgents.
  • Justingrad, August, 1919: where a pogrom made its way through the shtetl with an unspecified number of Jewish men murdered and Jewish women raped.
  • Ivankiv district, 18–20 October 1919. In the pogrom carried out by Cossack and Volunteer Army troops, 14 Jews were massacred, 9 wounded, and 15 Jewish women and girls were raped by units under the command of Struk in three days of carnage.

Immediate reactions

The leaders of the White Army issued orders condemning the pogroms, but these were largely unheeded due to widespread antisemitism. Lenin had spoken out against pogroms in March, and in June, the Bolsheviks assigned some funds for victims of pogroms. However, the events received little coverage in the Bolshevik press.

Escalation of hostility

Thousands of Jews marched in the great New York Parade to a mass meeting of protest against recent pogroms in Ukraine, where, speakers said, 120,000 Jews have been massacred. In the parade a service flag was carried with 8,000 stars for Jews killed in service of the United States. People in NYC protesting against the violent pogroms

Caption Reads: Thousands of Jews marched in the great New York Parade to a mass meeting of protest against recent pogroms in Ukraine, where, speakers said, 120,000 Jews have been massacred. In the parade a service flag was carried with 8,000 stars for Jews killed in service of the United States.

-December 2, 1919; Daily Ardmoreite (Oklahoma Paper)

The Kiev pogroms of 1919 proved the first of many such events. There were a total of 1,326 pogroms across Ukraine around that time, in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred. The pogroms were marked by utmost cruelty and face-to-face brutality. Thousands of women were raped. Hundreds of shtetlekh were pillaged, and Jewish neighborhoods were left in ruins. According to some estimates, overall, in the pogroms of 1918-1921, half a million Jews were left homeless.

Of these 53.7% were committed by Petlura's Ukrainian nationalists, the remainder by troops from White Volunteer Army (17%), the Bolsheviks' Red Army (2.3%), or local bands. These estimates include deaths due to massacre-induced disease or starvation. More recent estimates based on newly available Russian records judge the percentage killed by the White Volunteer Army to be much higher, perhaps as high as 50 percent."

Background and causes

The Kiev Pogroms of 1919 were splurges of looting, raping, and murder chiefly directed against the shops, factories, homes, and persons of the Jews. Ukraine had the largest concentration of Jews in Russia (part of the Russian organized Pale of Settlement) at the time and was also the scene of the bitterest and most prolonged fighting between Jews and non-Jews. This is important because according to research there is a positive correlation on a broad scale between the number of Jews, in a given place, and an increased likelihood of pogroms, and they become more likely when long-term subordination and superordination of social groups is in dispute.

The Kiev Pogroms of 1919 were not the first of their kind in Ukraine, and other instances of violence occurred and were carried out against Jews in and around Kiev in the 1880s Kiev Pogrom (1881) and the first decade of the 20th century Kiev Pogrom (1905). Ultimately the tension from these events never really subsided, it laid just beneath the surface and could be seen as a cause of further violence. However the Jewish massacres in Ukraine in the year 1919, which set the whole land ablaze, can not be compared with these previous pogroms due to its essence and scope. The Kiev Pogroms of 1919 were the bloodiest and the most atypical of the pogroms in Ukraine, taking place after the fall of the imperial regime and under conditions of bitter strife, where violence of every kind was basically unrestrained. Fueled by antisemitism and propaganda against the Jews, the massacre of the Jews in Kiev, in 1919, was essentially a method for Political Warfare.

The tsarist regime attempted to "divert the attention of the socially and politically discontented masses in another direction, the direction of least resistance." Essentially it was a way of redirecting popular discontent away from the government and onto a visible minority group. They did this by inciting the lower classes against the Jews who were largely defenseless, and who, they also proposed, were responsible for the misery of the people as a whole. The Jews were depicted as the exploiters of the people, as the leeches of society, who drained the blood of the worker and robbed him of the bounty of his economic activity.

Another cause of the Kiev Pogroms of 1919, was economic difficulties and changes in the urban environment. Economic difficulties and political strife tended to increase the probability of pogroms and this was certainly the case with Ukraine which was in a state of conflict and transition during the Ukrainian War of Independence and afterwards when it had separated from Russia. The stress of changes in the urban environment also provided fertile ground for violence against Jews, stresses such as immigration, not only by Jews from other parts of the empire but by outsiders in general made the pogroms possible.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Michael L. Brown (1992). "More Tears". Our Hands Are Stained with Blood. Destiny Image. p. 105. ISBN 9781560430681 – via Google Books, preview.
  2. Harry James Cargas, Reflections of a Post-Auschwitz Christian. On meeting Kurt Waldheim. Pg. 136
  3. ^ Benjamin Frankel, A Restless Mind: Essays in Honor of Amos Perlmutter. Published by Routledge, pg. 272
  4. ^ Zvi Y. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Pg. 65-70. Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN 0253338115.
  5. Sharman Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain, and the Russian Revolution. Published by Routledge, pg. 87
  6. Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: genocide in the twentieth century. Published by Cambridge University Press. Page 45
  7. William C. Fuller, The Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia, 2006
  8. Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, "Pogroms in Russia: Explanations, Comparisons, Suggestions", Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 17
  9. Elias Hiefetz, The Slaughter of the Jews In the Ukraine In 1919, 1921, preface
  10. ^ Elias Hiefetz, The Slaughter of the Jews In the Ukraine In 1919, 1921, chapter 1.
  11. Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, "Pogroms in Russia: Explanations, Comparisons, Suggestions", Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 18

Further references

  • Harold Henry Fisher: The Famine in Soviet Russia, 1919-1923: The Operations of the American Relief Administration
  • William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921. Published 1935 by Macmillan company pg. 230
  • David J. Mitchell, 1919: Red Mirage. Published 1970, Cape, 249
  • Zvi Y. Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present. Pg. 67.
  • I. Michael Aronson, Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.
Massacres or pogroms against Jews
1st – 13th century
1–999
Jewish revolts
1000–1299
Rhineland massacres (1096)
14th – 19th century
1300–1599
Persecution of Jews during the Black Death (1348–1350)
1600–1899
Russian Empire (1881–1884)
20th century
1900–1937
Russian Civil War (1918–1920)
1938–1945
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946–1999
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950s–1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
21st century
2000–2009
2001
2002
2003
2004–2009
2010–2019
2020–present
7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel
Categories: