The response of the Zionist movement and American Jewry to the pogroms in the Ukraine, 1918-1920: A comparative outlook

• In Event: Critical Crossroads: Jewish Responses and Experiences during the Refugee Crises of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Between 1918 and 1920 there were over a thousand pogroms in Ukraine, during which some 1000,000 Jews were murdered and wounded. These pogroms were instigated on the background of a bloody civil war between the Bolsheviks and their many opponents – the Ukrainian nationalists, German and Polish soldiers, the White Army headed by Anton Denikin, local partisans and Ukrainian farmers. Towns were torched, communities were wiped out, Jewish property was looted and Jews were executed in cruel and unusual ways, while women were raped and humiliated. Tens of thousands of orphans had to be taken care of by Jewish aid organizations. It was a national disaster the likes of which was not previously known.
Delegations sent to research the reasons for the pogroms, to document them and to offer material and emotional aid to the survivors left no room for doubt that the slaughter of Ukrainian Jewry during the Russian civil war was one of the cruelest and most brutal events in the history of the Jewish people since the days of the Chmelnitsky massacres of 1648-49.
My lecture is divided into three parts. The first examines the pogroms in Ukraine between 1918 and 1920. I intend to focus on the reasons for the pogroms and the extent of the destruction suffered by Ukrainian Jewry. The second part attempts to ascertain what the Zionist movement knew about the pogroms and how did the Yishuv respond? And the third part examines the attitude of the American Jewry to the pogroms with focus on the financial aid and the memorial patterns.

author

• Gur Alroey, University of Haifa