Editing Pogrom (section)

=== Eastern Europe after World War I ===
[[File:Ukraina1919.jpg|thumb|Map of pogroms in Ukraine between 1918 and 1920 per casualties]]
{{Further|Pogroms of the Russian Civil War}}

Large-scale pogroms, which began in the Russian Empire several decades earlier, intensified during the period of the [[Russian Civil War]] in the aftermath of World War I. Professor [[Zvi Gitelman]] (in ''A Century of Ambivalence'', originally published in 1988) estimated that only in 1918–1919 over 1,200 pogroms took place in Ukraine, thus amounting to the greatest slaughter of Jews in Eastern Europe since 1648.<ref name="Gitelman 2001 p65">{{cite book |last=Gitelman |first=Zvi Y. |author-link=Zvi Gitelman |year=2001 |page=65 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3f2rng6jDW4C&q=Kiev+March+1919+since+1648 |title=A Century of Ambivalence |chapter=Revolution and the Ambiguities |publisher=[[Indiana University Press]] |id=Chapter&nbsp;2 |isbn=978-0-253-33811-2}}</ref> The [[Kiev pogroms of 1919]], according to Gitelman, were the first of a subsequent wave of pogroms in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred across Ukraine; although more recent assessments{{by whom|date=November 2024}} put the Jewish death toll at more than 100,000.<ref name="Gitelman">{{cite book |first=Zvi Y. |last=Gitelman |author-link=Zvi Gitelman |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3f2rng6jDW4C |title=A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present |pages=65–70 |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-253-33811-2}}</ref><ref name="Kadish 1992 p87">{{cite book |first=Sharman |last=Kadish |author-link=Sharman Kadish |title=Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain, and the Russian Revolution |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=87 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rhkA1VpX5KQC&q=%22kiev+pogrom%22+1919&pg=RA5-PA286 |isbn=978-0-7146-3371-8 |year=1992}}</ref>{{verify quote|date=November 2024}}

[[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] in his controversial 2002 book ''[[Two Hundred Years Together]]'' provided additional statistics from research conducted by [[Nahum Gergel]] (1887–1931), published in Yiddish in 1928 and English in 1951. Gergel counted 1,236 incidents of anti-Jewish violence between 1918 and 1921, and estimated that 887 mass pogroms occurred, the remainder being classified as "excesses" not assuming mass proportions.<ref name="Kleg" /><ref name="Levin 1991 p43" /> Of all the pogroms accounted for in Gergel's research:
* About 40&nbsp;percent were perpetrated by the [[Ukrainian People's Republic]] forces led by [[Symon Petliura]]. The Republic issued orders condemning pogroms,<ref name="Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation" /> but lacked authority to intervene.<ref name="Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation">{{cite book |first=Serhy |last=Yekelchyk |author-link=Serhy Yekelchyk |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2CHiBwAAQBAJ&q=Petliura+pogroms |title=Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-19-530546-3 |page=106}}</ref> After May 1919 the Directory lost its role as a credible governing body; almost 75 percent of pogroms occurred between May and September of that year.<ref name="Magocsi 2010 p537" >{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TA1zVKTTsXUC&q=Petliura+1%2C236+pogroms |title=History of Ukraine – The Land and Its Peoples |first=Paul Robert |last=Magocsi |author-link=Paul Robert Magocsi |publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]] |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-4426-4085-6 |page=537}}</ref> Thousands of Jews were killed only for being Jewish, without any political affiliations.<ref name="Kleg">{{cite book |title=Hate Prejudice and Racism |first=Milton |last=Kleg |publisher=[[SUNY Press]] |year=1993 |page=4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yKrrSa7WqNwC&q=1%2C326+pogroms+Ukraine |isbn=978-0-7914-1536-8}}</ref>
* 25&nbsp;percent by the Ukrainian [[Green armies|Green Army]] and various [[Ukrainian nationalist]] gangs,
* 17&nbsp;percent by the [[White Army]], especially the forces of [[Anton Denikin]],
* 8.5&nbsp;percent of Gergel's total was attributed to pogroms carried out by men of the [[Red Army]] (more specifically [[Semyon Budenny]]'s First Cavalry, most of whose soldiers had previously served under Denikin).<ref name="Levin 1991 p43" /> These pogroms were not, however, sanctioned by the Bolshevik leadership; the high command "vigorously condemned these pogroms and disarmed the guilty regiments", and the pogroms would soon be condemned by [[Mikhail Kalinin]] in a speech made at a military parade in Ukraine.<ref name="Levin 1991 p43">{{cite book |first=Nora |last=Levin |author-link=Nora Levin |year=1991 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QgQUCgAAQBAJ&q=Bolshevik+disarmed |title=The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917: Paradox of Survival |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8147-5051-3 |page=43}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |author=Encyclopaedia Judaica |year=2008 |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0016_0_15895.html |title=Pogroms |encyclopedia=The Jewish Virtual Library}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Budnitski |first=Oleg |script-title=he:יהודי רוסיה בין האדומים ללבנים |trans-title=Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites |date=1997 |journal=Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies |volume=12 |pages=189–198 |jstor=23535861 |issn=0333-9068}}</ref>
Gergel's overall figures, which are generally considered conservative, are based on the testimony of witnesses and newspaper reports collected by the ''Mizrakh-Yidish Historiche Arkhiv'' which was first based in Kiev, then Berlin and later New York. The English version of Gergel's article was published in 1951 in the [[YIVO]] ''Annual of Jewish Social Science'' titled "The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918–1921".<ref>{{cite journal |first=Henry |last=Abramson |author-link=Henry Abramson |title=Jewish Representation in the Independent Ukrainian Governments of 1917–1920 |journal=[[Slavic Review]] |volume=50 |issue=3 |date=September 1991 |pages=542–550 |doi=10.2307/2499851 |jstor=2499851 |s2cid=181641495 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/div-classtitlejewish-representation-in-the-independent-ukrainian-governments-of-1917-1920div/49220526A769CE874099110B4A6A835C}}</ref>

On 8 August 1919, during the [[Polish–Soviet War]], Polish troops took over [[Minsk]] in [[Operation Minsk]]. They killed 31 Jews suspected of supporting the Bolshevist movement, beat and attacked many more, looted 377 Jewish-owned shops (aided by the local civilians) and ransacked many private homes.<ref name="HM414">{{cite book |title=All in a Life-time |first=Henry |last=Morgenthau |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_P-UEAAAAYAAJ |quote=Minsk Bolsheviks. |publisher=Doubleday & Page |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_P-UEAAAAYAAJ/page/n432 414] |year=1922 |oclc=25930642}}</ref><ref name="Andrew_Sloin_2017">{{cite book |first=Andrew |last=Sloin |title=The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nzrqDQAAQBAJ |year=2017 |publisher=[[Indiana University Press]] |isbn=978-0-253-02463-3}}.</ref> The "Morgenthau's report of October 1919 stated that there is no question that some of the Jewish leaders exaggerated these evils."<ref name="SW166">{{cite book |title=The United States and Poland |first=Piotr Stefan |last=Wandycz |author-link=Piotr S. Wandycz |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |year=1980 |id=American foreign policy library |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_XaFaNshCrkC&pg=PA166 |isbn=978-0-674-92685-1 |page=166}}</ref><ref name="PDS85">{{cite book |title=Poland, 1918–1945: an Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic |first=Peter D. |last=Stachura |author-link=Peter Stachura |publisher=[[Psychology Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-415-34358-9 |page=85 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BkKuir9oQYMC&pg=PA85}}</ref> According to Elissa Bemporad, the "violence endured by the Jewish population under the Poles encouraged popular support for the Red Army, as Jewish public opinion welcomed the establishment of the [[Belorussian SSR]]."<ref name="Elissa_Bemporad_2013">{{cite book |first=Elissa |last=Bemporad |title=Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gV64kQQyHGkC |year=2013 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-00827-5}}</ref>

After the [[First World War]], during the localized armed conflicts of independence, 72 Jews were killed and 443 injured in the 1918 [[Lwów pogrom (1918)|Lwów pogrom]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Joanna B. |last=Michlic |year=2006 |title=Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t6h2pI7o_zQC&pg=PA111 |page=111 |isbn=978-0-8032-5637-8 |quote=In three days 72 Jews were murdered and 443 others injured. The chief perpetrators of these murders were soldiers and officers of the so-called Blue Army, set up in France in 1917 by General Jozef Haller (1893–1960) and lawless civilians}}</ref><ref name="Strauss">{{cite book |author-link=Herbert A. Strauss |first=Herbert Arthur |last=Strauss |year=1993 |title=Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870–1933/39 |publisher=[[Walter de Gruyter]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SOFkWX8EC4cC&pg=PA1048 |page=1048 |isbn=978-3-11-013715-6}}</ref><ref name="frontier">{{cite book |last1=Gilman |first1=Sander L. |first2=Milton |last2=Shain |title=Jewries at the Frontier: Accommodation, Identity, Conflict |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1999 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OH1BXkbeI6gC |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=OH1BXkbeI6gC&pg=PA39 39] |isbn=978-0-252-06792-1 |quote=After the end of the fighting and as a result of the Polish victory, some of the Polish soldiers and the civilian population started a pogrom against the Jewish inhabitants. Polish soldiers maintained that the Jews had sympathized with the Ukrainian position during the conflicts}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Marsha L. |last=Rozenblit |year=2001 |title=Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SHhosKV6yFwC&pg=PA137 |page=137 |isbn=978-0-19-535066-1 |quote=The largest pogrom occurred in Lemberg [''= Lwow'']. Polish soldiers led an attack on the Jewish quarter of the city on November 21–23, 1918 that claimed 73 Jewish lives.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Zvi Y. |last=Gitelman |year=2003 |title=The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe |publisher=[[University of Pittsburgh Press]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jXNbzsp0XY8C&pg=PA58 |page=58 |isbn=978-0-8229-4188-0 |quote=In November 1918, Polish soldiers who had taken Lwow (Lviv) from the Ukrainians killed more than seventy Jews in a pogrom there, burning synagogues, destroying Jewish property, and leaving hundreds of Jewish families homeless.}}</ref> The following year, pogroms were reported by the ''[[New York Tribune]]'' in several cities in the newly established [[Second Polish Republic]].<ref name="Jewish Poland and its Red Reign of Terror" />