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The Lwów pogrom of Jewish population of Lwów (now Lviv) took place on November 21 - November 23 1918 during Polish-Ukrainian War. In the course of the three days unrest in the city, a minimum of 64 Jewish residents of Lwów were murdered were murdered by Polish soldiers and officers, and hundreds injured.
Background
The chaos during Polish take-over of the city was accompanied by unrest in which dozens of civilians - Poles, Jews and Ukrainians - perished.
In 1918, the Jews of Galicia found themselves caught in the middle of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, and victims of a rising wave of pogroms, fueled by lawlessness, perpetrated by both sides of the conflict. Throughout the 1918-1919 Polish-Ukrainian conflict, Jews had served as scapegoats for the frustrations of the warring forces. On November 9-10, the Jews of Lwów formed a militia and declared their neutrality in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict over the city. Poles resented the Jewish neutrality, and there were reports, leading to exaggerated rumors, that some Jews collaborated with the Ukrainians and shot at the Polish forces. On the morning November 22, after taking the city in the night of November 21 to November 22, and amidst rumors that Lwów's Jews would be made to pay for their neutrality in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, Polish forces interned and disarmed the Jewish militia.
Before withdrawing from the town, Ukrainian forces let the criminals out of the prisons. The town was also full of Austrian army deserters. Polish authorities also armed a number of volunteers (including some former criminals) who promised to fight the Ukrainains. The riots, including pogroms in the Jewish quarters (but an even larger disturbance in the Ukrainian quarters, with three times as much dead), broke out after Polish forces managed to get control over all parts of the city, including the Jewish quarters. Criminals, bands of Polish militia volunteers, and even drunken soldiers started robbing and pillaging parts of the city.
Polish forces were able to bring order to the city after one or two days (reports vary), on November 23 or November 24. Ad hoc courts handed severe verdicts during the riots. About one thousand people well jailed for participating in the riots.
Aftermath
The individuals accused of participation in the pogrom were punished by Polish authorities after they established themselves in the city. Eventually, the events also resulted in Polish government awarding liberal minority rights for Polish Jewish population (Little Treaty of Versailles).
The events were widely reported by European and American press, including The New York Times. Figures for the death toll vary; according to William W. Hagen, citing a report prepared for the Polish Foreign Ministry, approximately 150 Jews were murdered and 500 Jewish shops and their businesses were ransacked, while the 1919 Morgenthau report counted 64 Jewish deaths. Jewish contemporary sources reported 73 deaths; Polish officer and amateur historian Czesław Mączyński noted in his memoirs that official city documents support only 41 deaths. Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski has noted that the Morgenthau Report raised a question of whether the label pogrom it technically applicable to such riots in the times of war. News reports of the massacre, claimed by Polish historians to have been greatly exaggerated, were later used as a means of pressure on Polish delegation during Paris peace conference into signing the Minority Protection Treaty (the Little Treaty of Versailles). The Foreign Ministry report cited by Hagen characterized the incident as a pogrom, and criticized the inaction of Polish officials in failing to halt the violence, while accusing the officials of publicizing inflammatory charges against Lwów's Jews. Historian Norman Davies has cited figures of 340 total deaths in the violence, of whom two thirds were Ukrainian Christians and the remain 70 were Jews. Davies questioned whether these circumstances can be accurately described as a "pogrom," suggesting that Polish forces may have carried out two distinct massacres—an anti-semitic pogrom against Jews and an anti-Ukrainian massacre.
Polish and Jewish historians differently interpret the events of the Lwów 1918 pogrom. Jewish historians write about the unwillingness of Polish army to intervene during the killings, or even the army support for them, and point out that Polish sources exaggerate the Jewish support for the Ukrainians. Polish historians, on the other hand, write about army attempts to suppress the rioting, stress the Jewish-Ukrainian collaboration, and argue that the exaggerated news reports of that era blew this event out of proportions. Among Western scholars, Norman Davies describes the exaggeration of the news reports, criticized as inaccurate among others by contemporary British embassy to Poland.
Quotes
On Oct. 30, 1918, when the Austrian Empire collapsed, the Ukrainian troops, formerly in the Austrian service, assumed control of the town. A few hundred Polish boys, combined with numerous volunteers of doubtful character, recaptured about half the city and held it until the arrival of Polish re-enforcement on Nov. 21. The Jewish population declared themselves neutral, but the facts that the Jewish quarter lay within the section occupied by the Ukrainians and that the Jews had organized their own militia, and further, the rumor that some of the Jewish population had fired upon the soldiery, stimulated among the Polish volunteers an anti-Semitic bias that readily communicated itself to the relieving troops. The situation was further complicated by the presence of some 15,000 uniformed deserters and numerous criminals released by the Ukrainians from local jails, who were ready to join in any disorder particularly if, as in the case of wholesale pillage, they might profit thereby.
Upon the final departure of the Ukrainians, these disreputable elements plundered to the extent of many millions of crowns the dwellings and stores in the Jewish quarter, and did not hesitate to murder when they met with resistance. During the ensuing disorders, which prevailed on Nov. 21, 22 and 23, sixty four Jews were killed and a large amount of property destroyed. Thirty eight houses were set on fire, and owing to the paralysis of the Fire Department, were completely gutted. The synagogue was also burned and a large number of the sacred scrolls of the law were destroyed. The repression of the disorders was rendered more difficult by the prevailing lack of discipline among the junior officers to apply stern punitive measures. When officers’ patrols under experienced leaders were finally organized on Nov. 23, robbery and violence ceased.
On December 24, 1918, the Polish Government, through the Ministry of Justice, began a strict investigation of the events of Nov. 21 to 23. A special commission headed by a Justice of the Supreme Court, met in Lemberg for about two months, and rendered an extensively formal report which has been furnished the Mission. In spite of the crowded dockets of the local courts, where over 7,000 cases are now pending, 164 persons, ten of them Jews, have been tried for complicity in the November disorders, and numerous similar cases await disposal. Forty-four persons are under sentence ranging from ten days to eighteen months. Aside from the civil courts the local court-martial has sentenced military persons to confinement for as long as three years for lawlessness during the period in question. This Mission is advised that on the basis of official investigations the Government has begun the payment of claims for damages resulting from these events.
From the Morgenthau Report.
Categories:On November 22, in the early hours of the morning, the frightened population of the Jewish quarter heard the whistling and hooting of Polish soldiers coming in, and accompanied by shooting and harmonica playing, as well as by curses and foul names called out to the Jews. The real pursuit of the Jews had begun at seven in the morning. It began according to a plan worked out with military precision. Machine guns and armored cars were stationed on the thoroughfares of the Jewish quarter and the streets were raked with fire, so that no one dared step out of his house. The machine guns were placed at the following locations: at Cracow Place near the State theater, and at the entrances to Boznicza, Cebulna, Teodora Place, Zolkiewska etc. At the same time, patrols organized and every larger one was assigned to an area in which it could "work" witout restriction or curtailment. A headquarters for the plundering legionnaires was set up in the State theater, where orders were issued and reports received. A large reserve squad—of robbers and murderers—was also posted there...the Jewish quarter was cut off from the rest of the city by a powerful military cordon, through which no unauthorized person could enter or leave.
—Joseph Bendow , leader of the Lemberg Jewish militia. Der Lemberger Judenpogrom. Nov 1918-Jan 1919. (Vienna 1919).Notes
- Joanna B. Michlic. Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
- Herbert Arthur Strauss. Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39. Walter de Gruyter, 1993.
- Joseph W. Bendersky. The "Jewish Threat": Anti-semitic Politics of the U.S. Army. Basic Books, 2000.
- Zvi Y. Gitelman. The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
- Ezra Mendelsohn. The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars. Indiana University Press, 1983.
- Scott Ury. Who, What, When, Where, and Why Is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Constructing, and Possessing Polish Jewry. Jewish Social Studies, Volume 6, Number 3, Spring/Summer 2000:205-228.
- ^ William W. Hagen. "The Moral Economy of Popular Violence The Pogrom in Lwow, November 1918." In: Robert Blobaum, Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, Cornell University Press, 2005, ISBN 0801489695, Print, p.127-129
- ^ David Engel. "Lwów, 1918: The Transmutation of a Symbol and its Legacy in the Holocaust." In: Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003, ISBN 0813531586, Google Print, p.33-34
- ^ Norman Davies. "Ethnic Diversity in Twentieth Century Poland." In: Herbert Arthur Strauss. Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39. Walter de Gruyter, 1993.
- Andrzej Kapiszewski
- Blobaum, Robert. Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland.
- Template:Pl icon Czesław Mączyński, Boje Lwowskie, 1921
- Template:En icon Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. pp. p. 41-42. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3.
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