Pogrom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pogrom (from Russian: погром; from громить, pronounced [grʌˈmʲitʲ] "to wreak havoc, to demolish violently") is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious or other, and characterized by destruction of their homes, businesses and religious centres. Historically, the term as used in English has very often been used to denote extensive violence against Jews -- either spontaneous or premeditated -- but it has also been applied to similar incidents against other, mostly minority, groups. Pogroms are usually accompanied by physical violence against the targeted people and even murder or massacre.

Hep-Hep riots in Frankfurt, 1819. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jewish man with pitchfork and broom. On the right, a man wearing spectacles, tails, and a six-button waistcoat, "perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher,"^[1] holds another Jewish man by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. _{A contemporary engraving by Johann Michael Voltz.}

[edit] Pogroms against Jews

Antisemitism History · Timeline · Resources Anti-globalization and antisemitism Antisemitism around the world Arabs and antisemitism Christianity and antisemitism Islam and antisemitism Nation of Islam and antisemitism New antisemitism Racial antisemitism Religious antisemitism Secondary antisemitism Universities and antisemitism Allegations Deicide · Blood libel · Ritual murder Well poisoning · Host desecration Jewish lobby · Jewish Bolshevism Usury · Dreyfus affair Zionist Occupation Government Holocaust denial Antisemitic publications On the Jews and Their Lies The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Editions of The Protocols The International Jew · Mein Kampf The Culture of Critique series Persecutions Expulsions · Ghetto · Pogroms Jewish hat · Judensau · Yellow badge Inquisition · Segregation Holocaust · Nazism · Neo-Nazism Organizations fighting AS Anti-Defamation League Community Security Trust · EUMC Stephen Roth Institute · Wiener Library SPLC · SWC · UCSJ · SCAA Categories Antisemitism · Jewish history v • d • e

Part of a series of articles on Discrimination General forms Racism · Sexism · Ageism Religious intolerance · Xenophobia Specific forms Social Ableism · Adultism · Biphobia · Classism Elitism · Ephebiphobia · Gerontophobia Heightism · Heterosexism · Homophobia Lesbophobia · Lookism · Misandry Misogyny · Pediaphobia · Sizeism Transphobia Against cultures American · Arab · Armenian Australian · Blacks · Canadian · Catalan Chinese · English · European · French German · Igbo · Indian · Iranian · Irish Israeli · Italian · Japanese · Jewish Malay · Mexican · Native Americans · Polish Portuguese · Quebec · Roma Romanian · Russian · Scottish · Serbian · Spanish · Turkish · Whites Against beliefs Atheism · Bahá'í · Catholicism Christianity · Hinduism · Judaism Mormonism · Islam · Neopaganism Protestantism New religious movements Manifestations Slavery · Racial profiling · Lynching Hate speech · Hate crime Genocide (examples) · Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing · Pogrom · Race war Religious persecution · Gay bashing Blood libel · Paternalism Police brutality Movements Discriminatory Aryanism · Hate groups · Kahanism Ku Klux Klan Neo-Nazism · American Nazi Party South African National Party Supremacism Anti-discriminatory Abolitionism · Civil rights Women's / Universal suffrage LGBT rights · Feminism Masculism · Men's / Fathers' rights Children's rights · Youth rights Disability rights (Inclusion) Autistic rights · Equalism Policies Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid · Redlining · Internment Anti-discriminatory Emancipation · Civil rights Desegregation · Integration Equal opportunity Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action · Racial quota Reservation (India) · Reparation Forced busing Employment equity (Canada) Law Discriminatory Anti-miscegenation · Anti-immigration Alien and Sedition Acts · Jim Crow laws Black codes · Apartheid laws Ketuanan Melayu · Nuremberg Laws Anti-discriminatory Anti-discrimination acts Anti-discrimination law 14th Amendment · Crime of apartheid Other forms Nepotism · Cronyism · Colorism Linguicism · Ethnocentrism · Triumphalism Adultcentrism · Gynocentrism Androcentrism · Economic Related topics Bigotry · Prejudice · Supremacism Intolerance · Tolerance · Diversity Multiculturalism · Oppression Political correctness Reverse discrimination · Eugenics Racialism Discrimination Portal This box: view • talk • edit

[edit] Before the 19th century

There were antisemitic riots in Alexandria under Roman rule in 38 CE during the reign of Caligula.^[2]

Evidence of communal violence against Jews and Christians, who were seen as a Jewish sect, exists dating from the second century CE in Rome. These riots were generally precipitated by the Romans because Jews refused to accept Roman rule over Palestine and early Christians were seen as a Jewish sect that proselytized actively. It should be noted that Romans were generally quite tolerant of other religions.

Massive violent attacks against Jews date back at least to the Crusades such as the Pogrom of 1096 in France and Germany (the first to be officially recorded), as well as the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189-1190.

The eleventh century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.^[3] In the 1066 Granada massacre, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews.^[4]

In 1348, because of the hysteria surrounding the Black Plague, Jews were massacred in Chillon, Basle, Stuttgart, Ulm, Speyer, Dresden, Strasbourg, and Mainz. A large number of the surviving Jews fled to Poland, which was very welcoming to Jews at the time.^[5]

In 1543, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, a treatise in which he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people.

Jews and Roman Catholics were also massacred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of Ukrainian Cossacks in 1648-1654^[6], as well as in the following century during the Koliyivshchyna.

[edit] In the Russian Empire

The term pogrom as a reference to large-scale, targeted, and repeated antisemitic rioting saw its first use in the 19th century.

[edit] Early 19th century

The first pogrom is often considered to be the 1821 anti-Jewish riots in Odessa (modern Ukraine) after the death of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul, in which 14 Jews were killed.^[7] Other sources, such as the Jewish Encyclopedia, indicate that the first pogrom was the 1859 riots in Odessa.

[edit] 1881–84

The term "pogrom" became commonly used in English after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots swept through south-western Imperial Russia in 1881–1884.

The trigger for these pogroms was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, for which some blamed "the Jews."^[8] The extent to which the Russian press was responsible for encouraging perceptions of the assassination as a Jewish act has been disputed.^[9] Local economic conditions are thought to have contributed significantly to the rioting, especially with regard to the participation of the business competitors of local Jews and the participation of railroad workers, and it has been argued that this was actually more important than rumours of Jewish responsibility for the death of the Tsar.^[10] These rumours, however, were clearly of some importance, if only as a trigger, and they had a small kernel of truth: one of the close associates of the assassins, Gesya Gelfman, was indeed Jewish. The fact that the other assassins were all Christians had little impact on the spread of such antisemitic rumours.

During these pogroms, which started in Elizavetgrad in April of 1881, thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, and many families were reduced to poverty; and large numbers of men, women, and children were injured in 166 towns in the southwest provinces of the Empire (modern Ukraine). The new Tsar Alexander III initially blamed revolutionaries and the Jews themselves for the riots and issued a series of harsh restrictions on Jews. The pogroms continued for more than three years, and were thought to have benefited from at least the tacit support of the authorities, though there were also attempts on the part of the Russian government to end the rioting.^[10]Although the pogroms claimed the lives of relatively few Jews (two Jews were killed by the mobs, while 19 attackers were killed by tsarist authorities^[11], the damage, disruption and disturbance were dramatic. The pogroms and the official reaction to them led many Russian Jews to reassess their perceptions of their status within the Russian Empire, and so to significant Jewish emigration, mostly to the United States. These pogroms were referred to among Jews as the 'storms in the negev', negev being a Biblical word for the south. Changed perceptions among Russian Jews also indirectly gave a significant boost to the early Zionist movement.^[12]

[edit] 1903–06

A much bloodier wave of pogroms broke out in 1903–1906, leaving an estimated 2,000 Jews dead, and many more wounded, as the Jews took to arms to defend their families and property from the attackers. The number of people of other nationalities killed or wounded in these pogroms exceeds Jewish casualties.^[11] The New York Times described the First Kishinev pogrom of Easter, 1903:

The victims, mostly Jewish children, of a 1905 pogrom in Yekaterinoslav (today's Dnipropetrovsk).

"Home at last", painting by Moshe Maimon

"The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia (modern Moldova), are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Orthodox Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews," was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 [Note: the actual number of dead was 47-48^[13]] and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babies were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews."^[14]

Some historians believe that some of the pogroms had been organized^[15] or supported by the Tsarist Russian secret police, the Okhranka. Such facts as the alleged indifference of the Russian police and army were duly noted, for instance, during the three-day First Kishinev pogrom of 1903, as well as the preceding publication of articles in newspapers inciting anti-Jewish violence, suggesting to some that pogroms were in line with the internal policy of Imperial Russia. Niall Ferguson, however, suggests in his recent book "War of the World" that it was real or alleged Jewish involvement in contemporary left-wing politics that brought on the 'waves' of violence against the aforementioned southern areas of the Pale. There is also evidence which suggests that the police knew in advance about some pogroms, and chose not to act. The most violently antisemitic movement during this period was the Black Hundred, which actively participated in the pogroms.^[16]

[edit] Others

Even outside of these main outbreaks, pogroms remained common—there were anti-Jewish riots in Odessa in 1859, 1871, 1881, 1886 and 1905 in which hundreds were killed in total.

[edit] During the Revolution and the Civil Wars in Russia

Many pogroms accompanied the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. In his book 200 Years Together, Alexander Solzhenitsyn provides the following numbers from Nahum Gergel's 1951 study of the pogroms in the Ukraine: out of an estimated 887 mass pogroms, about 40% were perpetrated by the Ukrainian forces led by Symon Petliura, 25% by the Ukrainian Green Army and various Ukrainian nationalist gangs, 17% by the White Army, especially the forces of Anton Denikin, and 8.5% by the Red Army.

[edit] Outside of Russia

Pogroms spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Anti-Jewish riots also, broke out elsewhere in the world. During the Greek War of Independence, thousands of Jews were massacred by the Greeks to the point of extinction. In 1918 and throughout the Polish-Bolshevik War, there were sporadic pogroms in Poland. In 1927, there were pogroms in Oradea (Romania). In the Americas, there was a pogrom in Argentina in 1919, during the Tragic Week.

In the Arab world, there were a number of pogroms which played a key role in the massive emigration from Arab countries to Israel. These occurred during rising tensions and violence in Palestine as Jews tried to secure a homeland there. In 1945, anti-Jewish rioters in Tripoli, Libya killed 140 Jews. The Farhud pogrom in Iraq killed between 200 and 400 Jews.

There is also said to have been a Limerick Pogrom, in Ireland in the late 19th century. This pogrom was less violent than the others. Although it involved campaigns of intimidation, it chiefly took the form of an economic boycott against Jewish residents of Limerick.

[edit] During the Holocaust

Pogroms were also encouraged by the Nazis, especially early in the war before the larger mass killings began. The first of these pogroms was Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, often called Pogromnacht, in which Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed and up to 200 Jews were killed.

A number of deadly pogroms occurred during the Holocaust at the hands of non-Germans, for example the Jedwabne pogrom of 1941, in which Polish citizens killed between 400 and 1,600 Jews (estimates vary), with little to no German assistance. The region was previously occupied by the Soviet Union, (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) and the Jewish population was accused of collaboration with the Soviets.

In the city of Lviv, Ukrainian nationalists allegedly organized two large pogroms in June-July, 1941 in which around 6,000 [1] Jews were murdered, in apparent retribution for the alleged collaboration of some Jews with the previous Soviet regime. ( See: Controversy regarding the Nachtigall Battalion).

In Lithuania, Lithuanian nationalists (led by Klimaitis) engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms for similar reasons as well, on the 25th and 26th of June, 1941 (after the Nazi German troops had entered the city), killing about 3,800 Jews [2] and burning synagogues and Jewish shops^{[citation needed]}. Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was the Iaşi pogrom in Romania, in which as many as 13,266 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police, and military officials^{[citation needed]}.

Even after the end of World War II, there were still isolated pogroms, the first one in Poland being the Kraków pogrom on August 11, 1945. The most notable of the post World War II pogroms was the Polish Kielce pogrom of 1946, in which around 40 people lost their lives.

[edit] Influence of pogroms

The pogroms of the 1880s caused a worldwide outcry and, along with harsh laws, propelled mass Jewish emigration. Two million Jews fled the Russian Empire between 1880 and 1914, many going to the United Kingdom and United States.

In reaction to the pogroms and other oppressions of the Tsarist period, Jews increasingly became politically active. The General Jewish Labor Union, colloquially known as The Bund, and Jewish participation in the Bolshevik movements, were directly influenced by the pogroms. Similarly, the organization of Jewish self-defense leagues (which stopped the pogromists in certain areas during the second Kishinev pogrom), such as Hibbat Zion, led naturally to a strong embrace of Zionism, especially by Russian Jews.

[edit] Modern usage and examples

This article or section may be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective. (January 2008)

Other ethnic groups have suffered from similar targeted riots at various times and in different countries. In the view of some historians,^{[attribution needed]} the mass attacks on and random killings of Black people during the New York Draft Riots of 1863 can be defined as pogroms, though the word had not yet entered the English language at the time. The same could be said of the Chinese massacre of 1871 in Los Angeles, California, and of the killing of Koreans in the wake of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake in Tokyo, Japan, after newspapers printed articles saying Koreans were systematically poisoning wells, seemingly confirmed by the widespread observation of wells with cloudy water (a little-known effect after a large earthquake).

In the 1955 Istanbul Pogrom, ethnic Greeks were attacked and overwhelmed by ethnic Turkish mobs. In the years leading up to the Biafran War, ethnic Igbos and others from southeastern Nigeria were victims of targeted attacks. The term is therefore commonly used in the general context of riots against various ethnic groups.^{[citation needed]} Other examples include the pogroms against ethnic Armenians in Sumgait in 1988 and in Baku, in 1990, both of which occurred in Azerbaijan. The Jakarta Riots of May 1998 were pogroms targeted against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Businesses associated with Chinese were burnt down, women were raped, tortured and killed.^[17] Fearing for their lives, many ethnic Chinese, who made up about 3-5% of Indonesia's population, fled the country.

Sikhs [3] have also have also experienced pogroms living in Mother India, most notably those occurring in November 1984 when India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh guards acting in the aftermath of Operation Bluestar[4]

Over the next four days Sikhs were killed in retaliatory pogroms led by Congress activists and sympathizers. The then Congress government was widely criticized for doing very little at the time, possibly acting as a conspirator, especially since voting lists were used to identify Sikh families.^[18] Then Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, son of Indira Gandhi made a statement at Boat Club in New Delhi on November 19th 1984, on the birthday of Indira Gandhi “Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.”.^{[19] [20] [21]} His widow, Sonia Gandhi and current President of the Congress Party, officially apologized in 1998 for the events of November, 1984. The most affected regions were neighborhoods in capital New Delhi.

A riot that some consider a modern day antisemitic pogrom in the United States was the Crown Heights Riot (August 1991) which resulted in the murder of—most notably—Yankel Rosenbaum and also resulted in two other deaths numerous injuries, and damage to Jewish property.

In 1998, Jakarta was under riot, and there was large mass destructions to Chinese owned business and houses. Lots of Indonesian Chinese were also dead or murdered. Of the remaining survivals some decided to flee to other countries, some stayed because there is no where else for them to go. The Chinese population has been slowly replenished by Chinese from other provinces.

In 1999, after NATO troops took control of the Serbian province of Kosovo, the non-Albanian population of the capital Pristina was driven from their homes by ethnic Albanians and their property sacked and demolished, witnesses report that NATO forces stood back and refused to intervene.^[22][23]

[edit] Pogroms in arts and literature

In 1903, Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik wrote the poem In the City of Slaughter^[24] in response to the Kishinev pogrom.

Elie Wiesel's Trial of God depicts Jews fleeing a pogrom and setting up a fictitious "trial of God" for His negligence in not assisting them against the bloodthirsty mobs. In the end, it turns out that the mysterious stranger who has argued as God's advocate is none other than Lucifer. The experience of a Russian Jew is also depicted in Elie Wiesel's The Testament.

A pogrom is one of the central events in the play Fiddler on the Roof.

[edit] See also

• Lenin's speech: About Anti-Jewish Pogroms (Text of the speech, record (help·info))
• History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
• Anti-Semitism
• Race riot
• Hep-Hep riots
• Farhud
• Alexandria pogroms
• Istanbul pogrom
• Emancipation of the Jews in England#Pogroms in Russia
• Bohdan Khmelnytsky#Khmelnytsky in Jewish history
• Khmelnytsky Uprising#Jews and the Uprising
• Sumgait Pogrom
• Anti-Armenianism
• Anti-Jewish Violence In Poland, 1944-1946

[edit] References

v • d • e Topics in antisemitism
Articles on antisemitism	History of antisemitism • Timeline of antisemitism • Antisemitic canards • Christianity and antisemitism • Anti-globalization and antisemitism • Arabs and antisemitism • Islam and antisemitism • New antisemitism • Persecution of Jews • Ustaše • Jewish Bolshevism
Related topics	Philosemitism • Anti-Zionism • Self-hating Jew • Nazi propaganda
Topics related to religious antisemitism	Anti-Judaism • Spanish Inquisition • Portuguese Inquisition • Blood curse • Blood libel • Tiszaeszlár blood libel • Hilsner Affair • Beilis trial • Shiraz blood libel • Host desecration
Antisemitic laws, policies, and government actions	Hep-Hep riots • Pogroms in Russia • May Laws in Russia • Polish 1968 political crisis • Leo Frank trial in US • Dreyfus Affair in France • Farhud in Iraq • General Order № 11 of Ulysses S. Grant • Historical revisionism (negationism) • Nazi Germany and the The Holocaust • Racial policy of Nazi Germany • Holocaust denial
Antisemitic websites	Jew Watch • Radio Islam • Institute for Historical Review • Bible Believers
Organizations working against antisemitism	Simon Wiesenthal Center • Anti-Defamation League • Stephen Roth Institute • Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project • Scholars for Peace in the Middle East • Middle East Media Research Institute • Jewish Defense League

[edit] External links

• History of pogroms in Odessa
• Jewish history of the Russian Federation (through the Second World War)
• Kishinev pogrom history
• The Pogrom of 1905 in Odessa: A Case Study
• Modern History Sourcebook: The Jewish Chronicle: Outrages Upon Jews in Russia, May 6, 1881