The Jews Of Ukraine

"This volume surveys various past and present aspects of Jews and ethnic Ukrainians on the territory of Ukraine and in the diaspora."--

The Ukrainian pogroms of 1919 constitute a striking exhibition of mass savagery. Approximately 120,000 men, women and children were killed; whole villages were wiped out; the entire Jewish population of southern Russia was reduced to the brink of complete destruction. But Dr. Heifetz is not content merely to set down a tale of horrors. He seeks to analyze the social and psychological factors which lie behind this explosion of wholesale murder. He discovers three separate sets of motives, which hold good for the three classes of pogroms, those committed by Denikin, those committed by Petlura, and those committed by the Ukrainian guerilla leaders. The political viewpoint of General Denikin, widely hailed in western Europe and America as a champion of democracy against Bolshevik tyranny, was very simple. He believed that all the troubles of Russia should be ascribed to the overthrow of the Tsar, which, in his opinion, was brought about by the intrigues of Jews and professional revolutionists. His remedy was correspondingly simple. Kill off as many Jews and revolutionists as possible. Then the peasants would gladly surrender their land ; the workers would hasten to give up their factories; all classes again be well with Holy Russia. Something miscarried in Denikin's calculations: for the Red Army routed his Cossacks near Orel; and his defeat was completed by tumultuary uprisings of the Ukrainian peasants in his rear. But, before he was obliged to seek a hospitable refuge in England, he enjoyed the satisfaction of killing about 50,000 Jews. Dr. Heifetz adduces many eye witness reports of pogroms committed by Denikin's troops, together with specimens of the violently anti-Semitic literature distributed by order of his propaganda department. The case of the Ukrainian nationalist leader, Petlura, is somewhat different. Petlura claimed to be a Socialist; and he can scarcely have regarded pogroms as a necessary part of his political and economic policy. But he was unable to resist the temptation to make political capital by denouncing "the Jews at Moscow" and to attract the ruffianly elements to his side by offering prospects of unlimited looting. The protestations of Petlura's apologists that he actively opposed anti- Jewish outrages are effectively invalidated by the number of massacres unquestionably committed by his troops, by his appointment of a notorious organizer of pogroms, Colonel Petrov, to the post of Minister of War, and by the fact that he was present at a pogrom in Zhitomir without making any effort to stop it. Such bandit leaders as Makhno and Grigoriev may be considered, in a very crude and direct sense, representatives of the economic desires and interests of the Ukrainian peasants. These peasants were very good Bolsheviki, so far as driving out the landlords was concerned. But, having gained possession of the land, they resented and opposed the existence of any strong central government, whether communist or monarchist. What they wanted was complete freedom of their manufactured goods, and incidentally, to murder the Jews. Of all the contending factions the Soviet government alone consistently and vigorously repressed every anti- Jewish manifestation in the territory under its control. Dr. Heifetz gives many instances of the humanity and discipline of the Red troops. Whenever the Soviet forces were compelled to retreat even the Jewish bourgeoisie fled with them for protection.

On the eve of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941, Ukraine was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. Between 1941 and 1944, some 1.4 million Jews were killed there, and one of the most important centers of Jewish life was destroyed. Yet, little is known about this chapter of Holocaust history. Drawing on archival sources from the former Soviet Union and bringing together researchers from Ukraine, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, The Shoah in Ukraine sheds light on the critical themes of perpetration, collaboration, Jewish-Ukrainian relations, testimony, rescue, and Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine. Contributors are Andrej Angrick, Omer Bartov, Karel C. Berkhoff, Ray Brandon, Martin Dean, Dennis Deletant, Frank Golczewski, Alexander Kruglov, Wendy Lower, Dieter Pohl, and Timothy Snyder.

Between 1918 and 1921 an estimated 100,000 Jewish people were killed, maimed or tortured in pogroms in Ukraine. Hundreds of Jewish communities were burned to the ground and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless and destitute, including orphaned children. A number of groups were responsible for these brutal attacks, including the Volunteer Army, a faction of the Russian White Army. The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19: Prelude to the Holocaust is a vivid and horrifying account of the atrocities committed by the Volunteer Army, written by Nokhem Shtif, an eminent Yiddish linguist and social activist who joined the relief efforts on behalf of the pogrom survivors in Kiev. Shtif’s testimony, published in 1923, was born from his encounters there and from the weighty archive of documentation amassed by the relief workers. This was one of the earliest efforts to systematically record human rights atrocities on a mass scale. Originally written in Yiddish and here skillfully translated and introduced by Maurice Wolfthal, The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19 brings to light a terrible and historically neglected series of persecutions that foreshadowed the Holocaust by twenty years. It is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of human rights, Jewish studies, Russian and Soviet studies, and Ukraine studies. Maurice Wolfthal has also written the award-winning translation of Bernard Weinstein’s The Jewish Unions in America, also published by Open Book Publishers.

Winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for History From the two-time winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award, the first full depiction of the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution and how they laid the groundwork for the Holocaust Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and a National Jewish Book Award Between 1918 and 1921, over 100,000 Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townspeople and soldiers who blamed them for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbours with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records and official orders, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers and government officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems. In riveting prose, In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century.

Consists of two essays prepared for two conferences in 1982 by the authors (a Jew and a Ukrainian), both professors of political science, which examine the perceptions of Jews and Ukrainians towards each other in an attempt to further understanding between the two groups. Surveys the history of Jews in the Ukraine, and Jewish-Ukrainian relations. In the view of Ukrainians, Jews were associated with alien rulers from the 17th-18th centuries when they fulfilled administrative and financial functions for the Polish ruling class; thus, they were caught in the middle during the Chmielnicki uprising in 1648. Jews tended to view Ukrainians as primitive peasants, and did not understand their national aspirations. Jewish-Ukrainian relations were best during 1917-1920 when the independent Ukrainian government granted Jews national autonomy. Concludes that "only when the conditions of foreign domination are eradicated, for both Jews and Ukrainians, many of the problems in Jewish-Ukrainian relations may be resolved".

Based on journalist Sam Sokol's reporting from Ukraine during the first years of the Donbas War, Putin's Hybrid War and the Jews chronicles the collapse of Jewish life in the regions of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian-backed separatist militias in 2014. Based on extensive interviews and told through the eyes of refugees, politicians, soldiers, and aid workers, this book is a rich account of both the ravages of armed conflict and the Kremlin's attempts to weaponize antisemitism as part of its hybrid war against Ukraine.