The Pogroms In Ukraine 1918 19 Prelude To The Holocaust

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.

"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 Schtif, an eminent Yiddish linguist and social activist who joined the relief efforts on behalf of the pogrom survivors in Kiev. Schtif'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." This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

"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."--Publisher's website.

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.

In riveting prose, In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century. Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine and Poland by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors 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 complete 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 governmental 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 the years following the Russian Revolution, a bitter civil war was waged between the Bolsheviks, with their Red Army of Workers and Peasants on the one side, and the various groups that constituted the anti-Bolshevik movement on the other. The major anti-Bolshevik force was the White Army, whose leadership consisted of former officers of the Russian imperial army. In the received—and simplified—version of this history, those Jews who were drawn into the political and military conflict were overwhelmingly affiliated with the Reds, while from the start, the Whites orchestrated campaigns of anti-Jewish violence, leading to the deaths of thousands of Jews in pogroms in the Ukraine and elsewhere. In Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920, Oleg Budnitskii provides the first comprehensive historical account of the role of Jews in the Russian Civil War. According to Budnitskii, Jews were both victims and executioners, and while they were among the founders of the Soviet state, they also played an important role in the establishment of the anti-Bolshevik factions. He offers a far more nuanced picture of the policies of the White leadership toward the Jews than has been previously available, exploring such issues as the role of prominent Jewish politicians in the establishment of the White movement of southern Russia, the "Jewish Question" in the White ideology and its international aspects, and the attempts of the Russian Orthodox Church and White diplomacy to forestall the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The relationship between the Jews and the Reds was no less complicated. Nearly all of the Jewish political parties severely disapproved of the Bolshevik coup, and the Red Army was hardly without sin when it came to pogroms against the Jews. Budnitskii offers a fresh assessment of the part played by Jews in the establishment of the Soviet state, of the turn in the policies of Jewish socialist parties after the first wave of mass pogroms and their efforts to attract Jews to the Red Army, of Bolshevik policies concerning the Jewish population, and of how these stances changed radically over the course of the Civil War.

The first scholarly account of massive and fateful pogrom waves, interpreted through the lens of folk culture and social psychology.