Pogrom

For the volcano in the Aleutian Islands, see Pogromni Volcano.

A pogrom (Russian: погро́м) is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres. It originally and still typically refers to 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews, particularly in the Russian Empire.

Infamous pogroms include the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev Pogrom (1905), Białystok pogrom (1906), Lwów pogrom (1918), and Kiev Pogroms (1919). The most infamous pogrom in Nazi Germany was the Kristallnacht of 1938, in which at least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps,^[2] over 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.^[3]^[4]

Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the Iaşi pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – and the Jedwabne pogrom in Poland. Post World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom, and the 1947 Aleppo pogrom.

Attacks against non-Jews that have been described as pogroms including the 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom against Igbos in southern Nigeria, and the 1988 Sumgait pogrom and Kirovabad pogrom, in which ethnic Armenians were targeted.

1 Definition
2 Etymology
3 Pogroms against Jews
4 Other ethnic targets
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading

Definition

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries".^[5] The term is also used in reference to attacks on non-Jewish ethnic minorities; reviewing its uses in scholarly literature, Werner Bergmann proposes that pogroms be "defined as a unilateral, nongovernmental form of collective violence initiated by the majority population against a largely defenseless ethnic group, and occurring when the majority expect the state to provide them with no assistance in overcoming a (perceived) threat from the minority."^[6]

Etymology

The word pogrom came from the verb громи́ть (Russian pronunciation: [ɡrɐˈmʲitʲ]), "to destroy, to wreak havoc, to demolish violently" (in perfective, taking the form погроми́ть). In Russian/Ukrainian the word pogrom has a much wider application than in English, and can be applied to any incident of wanton and unrestrained destruction on a mass scale, such as may occur during wartime. The word pogrom may have come into English from the Yiddish word פאָגראָם, also a loanword from Russian.^[7]

Pogroms against Jews

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Medieval

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

During the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, beginning in the 9th century, Islamic Spain was more tolerant towards Jews.^[8] The 11th century, however, saw several Muslim pogroms against Jews; notably those that occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.^[9] In the 1066 Granada massacre, the first large pogrom on European soil, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews^[10] In 1033 about 6,000 Jews were killed in Fez, Morocco by Muslim mobs.^[11]^[12] Mobs in Fez murdered thousands of Jews in 1276,^[13] and again, leaving only 11 alive, in 1465.^[13]^[14]

In 1348, because of the hysteria surrounding the Black Plague, Jews were massacred in Chillon, Basle, Stuttgart, Ulm, Speyer, Dresden, Strasbourg, and Mainz. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed.^[15] A large number of the surviving Jews fled to Poland, which was very welcoming to Jews at the time.^[16]

Jews, Poles, and Catholics were massacred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of Ukrainian Cossacks in retaliation for Polish colonialism in 1648–1654,^[17] and during the Koliyivshchyna in 1768-1769.

19th century

The Damascus affair occurred in 1840, when an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Immediately following, a charge of ritual murder was brought against a large number of Jews in the city. All were found guilty. The consuls of England, France and Austria as well as Ottoman authorities, Christians, Muslims and Jews all played a great role in this affair.^[18]

Following the Damascus affair, Pogroms spread through the Middle East and North Africa. Pogroms occurred in: Aleppo (1850, 1875), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Beirut (1862, 1874), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), Jerusalem (1847), Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901–02), Mansura (1877), Alexandria (1870, 1882, 1901–07), Port Said (1903, 1908), Damanhur (1871, 1873, 1877, 1891), Istanbul (1870, 1874), Buyukdere (1864), Kuzguncuk (1866), Eyub (1868), Edirne (1872), Izmir (1872, 1874).^[19]

There was a massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1828.^[20] There was another massacre in Barfurush in 1867.^[20]

In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed the Torah scrolls. This is known as the Allahdad incident. It was only by forcible conversion that a massacre was averted.^[21]

20th century

Russian Empire

There were several waves of pogroms throughout the Russian Empire.

See Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire.

Outside Russia

Pogroms spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Anti-Jewish riots also broke out elsewhere in the world.

In the 1911 Tredegar riot in Wales, Jewish homes and businesses were looted and burned over the period of a week, before the British army was called in by then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who described the riot as a "pogrom".^[22]
In the Lwów pogrom (1918), 72 Jews were killed and 443 injured by Polish troops, militia and civilians.^[23]^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27]
In the Americas, there was a pogrom in Argentina in 1919, during the Tragic Week^[28]
In 1919, pogroms were reported in several cities in Poland.^[29]
In 1927, there were pogroms in Oradea (Romania).

In the Arab world, there were a number of pogroms which played a key role in the massive emigration from Arab countries to Israel.

On 1–2 June 1941, the two-day Farhud pogrom in Iraq, in which "rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes".^[30]^[31]
Anti-Jewish rioters killed over 140 Jews in the 1945 Tripoli pogrom.
The 1945 Cairo pogrom marked the start of a series of violent acts against Egypt's Jews.
Half of Aleppo's 10,000 Jews left the city in the wake of the 1947 Aleppo pogrom.
The 1947 Aden pogrom brought to an end the existence of Aden's almost two-thousand-year-old Jewish community.
The 1948 Oujda and Jerada pogrom and 1954 Petitjean pogrom were pogroms in Morocco.^[32]

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 at least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps,^[2] over 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.^[3]^[4]

A number of pogroms occurred during the Holocaust at the hands of non-Germans. 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.^[33]

In the city of Lwow, some Ukrainian police along with occupying Nazis organized two large pogroms in June–July, 1941, in which around 6,000 Jews were murdered,^[34] in alleged retribution for the collaboration of some Jews with the Soviet regime and the large number of communists who happened to be of Jewish descent (see The Lviv pogroms controversy (1941)).

In Lithuania, some Lithuanian police led by Algirdas Klimaitis and the Lithuanian partisans — consisting of LAF units reinforced by 3,600 deserters from 29th Lithuanian Territorial Corps of the Red Army^[35] engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas along with occupying Nazis. On 25–26 June 1941 about 3,800 Jews were killed and synagogues and Jewish settlements burned.^[36]

During the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, some non-Jewish Poles burned at least 340 Jews in a barn-house (final findings of the Institute of National Remembrance) in the presence of Nazi German Ordnungspolizei. The role of the German Einsatzgruppe B remains the subject of debate.^[37]^[38]^[39]^[40]^[41]^[42]

After World War II

After the end of World War II, a series of violent anti-Semitic incidents occurred throughout Europe, particularly in the Soviet-liberated East, where most of the returning Jews came back after liberation by the Allied Powers, and where the Nazi propagandists had extensively promoted the notion of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy (see anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe, 1944–1946).

The 1991 Crown Heights Riot in Brooklyn, New York has been referred to as a "pogrom" by persons such as Rudolf Giuliani^[43] and the New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal.^[44]

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, with 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. Jewish participation in The General Jewish Labor Bund, colloquially known as The Bund, and in the Bolshevik movements, was 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 Hovevei Zion, led naturally to a strong embrace of Zionism, especially by Russian Jews.

Other ethnic targets

Diverse ethnic groups have suffered from these targeted riots at various times and in different countries. The term "pogrom" has been used in the general context of violences against various ethnic groups. Werner Bergmann proposes that "[b]y the collective attribution of a threat, the pogrom differs from forms of violence, such as lynching, which are directed at individual members of a minority, while the imbalance of power in favor of the rioters distinguishes pogroms from other forms of riot (food riots, race riots, or 'communal riots' between evenly matched groups), and again, the low level of organization separates them from vigilantism, terrorism, massacre and genocide".^[45]

In the 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom Igbos in Nigeria were targeted
In 1988, Armenians in Azerbaijan were targeted in the Sumgait pogrom and Kirovabad pogrom.
In 1989, after bloody pogroms against the Meskhetian Turks by Uzbeks in Central Asia's Ferghana Valley, nearly 90,000 Meskhetian Turks left Uzbekistan.^[46]^[47]
The Pogrom of Armenians in Baku occurred in 1990.
In Egypt, the rise in extremist Islamist groups such as the Gama'at Islamiya during the 1980s was accompanied by attacks on Copts and on Coptic churches; these have since declined with the decline of those organizations, but still continue.^[48] The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases.^[49]
In 2006, rioters damaged shops owned by Chinese-Tongans in Nukuʻalofa.^[50] Chinese migrants were evacuated from the riot-torn Solomon Islands.^[51]
In May 2008, there were pogroms against migrants across South Africa that left almost 100 people dead and up to 100,000 displaced.^[52]
Although Iraqi Christians represent less than 5% of the total Iraqi population, they make up 40% of the Iraqi refugees now living in nearby countries, according to UNHCR.^[53]^[54] Massacres, ethnic cleansing, and harassment has increased since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.^[55]
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has used the term "pogrom" twice in recent history to describe attacks against Palestinian Arab civilians perpetrated by Israeli settlers. The first usage was in reference to a group of West Bank settlers from Yitzhar who attacked a Palestinian village in September 2008.^[56] The second usage described an incident which occurred in December 2008, wherein Hebron settlers lashed out at Palestinians in that city in response to the eviction of a settler group from a disputed building by Israeli security. Olmert opined, "As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term 'pogrom' to describe what I have seen".^[57]

References

^ Amos Elon (2002), The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743–1933. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 0-8050-5964-4. p. 103.
^ ^a ^b "World War II: Before the War", The Atlantic, June 19, 2011. "Windows of shops owned by Jews which were broken during a coordinated anti-Jewish demonstration in Berlin, known as Kristallnacht, on Nov. 10, 1938. Nazi authorities turned a blind eye as SA stormtroopers and civilians destroyed storefronts with hammers, leaving the streets covered in pieces of smashed windows. Ninety-one Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps.
^ ^a ^b Michael Berenbaum, Arnold Kramer (2005). The World Must Know. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. p. 49.
^ ^a ^b Gilbert, pp. 30–33.
^ "Pogrom", Encyclopædia Britannica. "pogrom, (Russian: “devastation,” or “riot”), a mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
^ For this definition and a review of scholarly definitions see Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, International handbook of violence research, Volume 1 (Springer, 2005) pp 352-55 online
^ Oxford English Dictionary, Dec. 2007 revision.
^ Menocal, María Rosa (April 2003). The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain. Back Bay Books. ISBN 0316168718
^ Frederick M. Schweitzer, Marvin Perry., Anti-Semitism: myth and hate from antiquity to the present, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, ISBN 0-312-16561-7, pp. 267–268.
^ Granada by Richard Gottheil, Meyer Kayserling, Jewish Encyclopedia. 1906 ed.
^ Moroccan Jews.
^ The Forgotten Refugees - Historical Timeline.
^ ^a ^b N.A. Stillman. 1978. The Moroccan Jewish experience: a revisionist view. Jerusalem Quarterly 9: 111-123
^ The Treatment of Jews in Arab/Islamic Countries
^ "Jewish History 1340 - 1349".
^ Norman Davies (1996). Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 412. ISBN 0-19-820171-0.
^ Serhii Plokhi. “The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine” – Oxford.: Oxford University Press, 2001 p. 178.
^ Frankel, Jonathan: The Damascus Affair: 'Ritual Murder', Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-48396-4 p.1
^ Yossef Bodansky. "Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument" Co-Produced by The Ariel Center for Policy Research and The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, 1999. ISBN 0967139104, ISBN 978-0967139104
^ ^a ^b Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. Vintage Books, 2001, pp. 10-11.
^ Patai, Raphael (1997). Jadid al-Islam: The Jewish "New Muslims" of Meshhed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2652-8.
^ Neil Prior. "History debate over anti-Semitism in 1911 Tredegar riot". BBC News, 19 August 2011.
^ Joanna B. Michlic (2006). Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. University of Nebraska Press. p. 111. "One of the first and worst instances of anti-Jewish violence was Lwow pogrom, which occurred in the last week of November 1918. 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".
^ Herbert Arthur Strauss (1993). Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39. Walter de Gruyter. p. 1048. "In Lwow, a city whose fate was disputed, the Jews tried to maintain their neutrality between Poles and Ukrainians, and in reaction a pogrom was held in the city under auspices of the Polish army"
^ Gilman, Sander L.; Milton Shain (1999). Jewries at the Frontier: Accommodation, Identity, Conflict. University of Illinois Press. p. 39. ISBN 0252067924,. OCLC 9780252067921. "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"
^ Marsha L. Rozenblit (2001). Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria During World War I. Oxford University Press. p. 137. "The largest pogrom occurred in Lemberg. Polish soldiers led an attack on the Jewish quarter of the city on November 21–23, 1918 that claimed 73 Jewish lives".
^ Zvi Y. Gitelman (2003). The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 58. "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."
^ "Tragic Week Summary". BookRags.com. 2010-11-02. http://www.bookrags.com/research/tragic-week-sjel-02/. Retrieved 2011-10-24.
^ Tobenkin, Elias (1919-06-01). "Jewish Poland and its Red Reign of Terror". New York Tribune. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-06-01/ed-1/seq-59/. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
^ "The Farhud", Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
^ Julia Magnet. "The terror behind Iraq's Jewish exodus", The Daily Telegraph, April 16, 2003.
^ Bostom, Andrew G. (Ed.) 2007. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.
^ Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (RICHR) submitted to President Ion Iliescu in Bucharest on 11 November 2004.
^ Holocaust Resources, History of Lviv.
^ Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust, McFarland & Company, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0371-3, Google Print, p.164.
^ "Holocaust Revealed". www.holocaustrevealed.org. http://www.holocaustrevealed.org/_domain/holocaustrevealed.org/lithuania/lithuanian_history.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
^ http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal.php?serwis=en&dzial=55&id=131&search=5667
^ A communiqué regarding the decision to end the investigation of the murder of Polish citizens of Jewish nationality in Jedwabne on 10 July 1941 (Komunikat dot. postanowienia o umorzeniu śledztwa w sprawie zabójstwa obywateli polskich narodowości żydowskiej w Jedwabnem w dniu 10 lipca 1941 r.) from 30 June 2003.
^ Contested memories By Joshua D. Zimmerman, Rutgers University Press - Publisher; pp. 67-68.
^ Antisemitism By Richard S. Levy, ABC-CLIO - Publisher; p. 366.
^ Alexander B. Rossino, Polish "Neighbors" and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Białystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 (2003).
^ Jan Tomasz Gross, "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland", Penguin Books, Princeton University Press, 2002.
^ "Mayor race focuses on word" By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr, The New York Times, June 01, 1993, accessed August 16, 2011, page 1.
^ "On My Mind; Pogrom in Brooklyn" by A. M. ROSENTHAL, The New York Times, September 03, 1991, accessed August 16, 2011, page 1.
^ Heitmeyer and Hagan, International handbook of violence research, Volume 1 pp 352-55
^ Focus on Mesketian Turks.
^ Meskhetian Turk Communities around the World.
^ Egyptian riots reveal wide religious divide, csmonitor.com, April 19, 2006.
^ BBC News|MIDDLE EAST|Funerals for victims of Egypt clashes.
^ "Editorial: Racist moves will rebound on Tonga". The New Zealand Herald. 23 November 2001. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=229612. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
^ Spiller, Penny: "Riots highlight Chinese tensions", BBC News, Friday, 21 April 2006, 18:57 GMT.
^ Richard Pithouse, 'The Pogroms in South Africa: a crisis in citizenship' Mute Magazine, June 2008.
^ Christians, targeted and suffering, flee Iraq.
^ IRAQ Terror campaign targets Chaldean church in Iraq, Asia News.
^ Mark Lattimer: 'In 20 years, there will be no more Christians in Iraq'|Iraq|Guardian Unlimited.
^ Settlers attack Palestinian village
^ Olmert condemns settler "pogrom"

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