Pogrom – History of Sorts

Pogroms

I had a chat a few days ago with a friend. We were talking about the Holocaust and we both agreed that the Germans, specifically the German Nazis, were the main instigators and culprits of the world’s biggest crime. Without them, there may not have been a Holocaust or at least not on the scale.

However, the hate for Jews is not solely a German thing, there were many violent against the Jewish population of Europe and beyond. These acts have been happening for centuries. Even in the 11th and 12th centuries, there were Pogroms.

Before I go into some of the more recent Pogroms, it is important to understand what a Pogrom is. There are several definitions, following are just a few of them:

• An organized massacre and looting of helpless people, usually with the connivance of officials, specifically, such a massacre of Jews.

• A pogrom is generally thought of as a cross between a popular riot and a military atrocity, where an unarmed civilian, often urban, population is attacked by either an army unit or peasants from surrounding villages, or a combination of the two… Jews have not been the only group to suffer under this phenomenon, but historically Jews have been frequent victims of such violence. In mainstream usage, the word has come to imply an act of antisemitism.

• Originally used to describe violent and often murderous anti-Jewish persecutions (the most important of which took place in Kishinev) in Russia following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, more recently the term ‘pogrom’, from the Russian pogrom (total destruction, devastation) has also been used to refer to attacks on other groups.

As I stated earlier this was not just a German phenomenon, the actual word comes from the Russian language. There were pogroms everywhere in Europe and other parts of the world. Even in a peaceful place like Limerick in Ireland, my hometown.

The Limerick Pogrom

On the evening of 11 January 1904, Fr John Creagh took the pulpit during mass at the Redemptorist church at Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick. His congregation comprised the weekly meeting of the ‘Monday Division’ of the Arch-Confraternity of the Holy Family, a 6,500-strong male sodality which, under his then spiritual direction, was a powerful force in the city’s Catholic life. John Creagh, a Redemptorist and Spiritual Director of the Arch Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, gave a sermon at their weekly meeting attacking Jews. He repeated many Anti-semitic conspiracy theories, including that of ritual murder, and said that the Jews had come to Limerick “to fasten themselves on us like leeches and to draw our blood”. Dermot Keogh describes what happened after Creagh delivered his lecture calling for a boycott on 11 January 1904.

In 1904 there were roughly 35 Jewish families, about 150 people, in the Limerick urban area. They lived in Collooney Street (now Wolfe Tone Street), not far from the present-day O’Connell monument, and had established a Jewish burial ground at Kilmurray, near Castleconnell. The first attack on them came in January, a few days prior to Fr Creagh’s sermon, when, following a colourful Jewish wedding, Judge Adams commented on their commercial success and vibrancy. This led to a sour report in the Limerick Leader, which compared their prosperity to the poverty of the native population.

A few days later the matter was taken up by Fr John Creagh CSSR, spiritual director of the Arch Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, which had a membership of around 6,000.
From the pulpit Fr Creagh stated:

‘The Jews were once chosen by God. But they rejected Christ, they crucified Him. They called down the curse of His precious blood on their heads. They were scattered over the earth after the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and they bore away with them an unquenchable hatred for the name of Jesus Christ and his followers. The Jews came to Limerick apparently the most miserable tribe imaginable, with want on their faces, and now they have enriched themselves and can boast a very considerable house property in the city. Their rags have been exchanged for silk. How do the Jews manage to make their money? Some of you may know their methods better than I do, but it is still my duty to expose these methods. They go about as peddlers from door to door, pretending to offer articles at very cheap prices, but in reality, charging several times more than in the shops…They forced themselves and their goods upon the people and the people are blind to their tricks.”

Collooney Street where most Limerick Jews lived, was only a few minutes’ walk from the Redemptorist church. The hundreds who left the church after the meeting had to pass the top of Collooney Street on their way home; many were fired up by Creagh’s incendiary sermon. The Jewish community immediately sensed the menacing mood of the crowd-turned-mob and remained locked in their homes as the church militants passed by. Jewish shops, however, remained open and their owners felt menaced. One old Fenian, a member of the confraternity, single-handedly defended a shop from attack until the police arrived to mount a guard.

John Raleigh, a teenager (15 years of age), was arrested and incarcerated in Mountjoy Prison for one month for throwing a stone at the rabbi (which struck him on the ankle). Once released he returned home to a welcoming throng who were protesting that the teenager was innocent and that the sentence imposed was too harsh. While in prison Raleigh was called a “Limerick Jew slayer” by a warder, but Raleigh, who claimed he was innocent, was insulted by this and reported the incident to the chief warder. Later, after 32 Jews had left Limerick due to the pogrom, Creagh was disowned by his superiors, who said that “religious persecution had no place in Ireland”

The Jedwabne Pogrom

Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, issued orders on 29 June and 2 July 1941, for German forces to support ‘self-cleansing actions’ by the local population to rid itself of people alleged to have collaborated with the Soviet occupation, communists and Jews.

“No obstacles should be made for the efforts aimed at self-cleaning among anti-communist and anti-Jewish circles in the newly occupied territories. To the contrary, they should be instigated without leaving a trace, and if need be – intensified and directed on the right track, but in such a manner so that the local ‘self-defence circles’ could not refer to the orders or political promises made to them.” —Reinhard Heydrich

On 10 July 1941, hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children were massacred by local Poles in the town of Jedwabne.

Prior to the Holocaust, Jews made up between 60 and 70 per cent of the overall population of some 2,000 in Jedwabne. The town was situated in an area that was a hotbed of the antisemitic National Democratic Party (Endecja). After the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, Jedwabne was taken by the Soviets.

Shortly after the Soviets retreated, Polish townspeople rounded up hundreds of their Jewish neighbours and forced them to dismantle a monument of Vladimir Lenin that the Soviets had installed. From there the Jews were forced into a barn, where they were burned to death.

There is general agreement that German secret police or intelligence officials were seen in Jedwabne on the morning of 10 July 1941, or the day before, and met with the town council. Szmuel Wasersztajn’s witness statement in 1945 said that eight Gestapo men arrived on 10 July and met with the town authorities. Another witness said four or five Gestapo men arrived and “they began to talk in the town hall”. “Gestapo man” was used to refer to any German in a black uniform, Persak writes. The witnesses said they believed the meeting had been held to discuss murdering the town’s Jews.

According to the IPN’s( Institute of National Remembrance) report, on 10 July 1941 Polish men from nearby villages began arriving in Jedwabne “with the intention of participating in the premeditated murder of the Jewish inhabitants of the town”. Gross writes that a leading role in the pogrom was carried out by four men, including Jerzy Laudański and Karol Bardoń, who had earlier collaborated with the Soviet NKVD and were now trying to recast themselves as zealous collaborators with the Germans. He also writes that no “sustained organized activity” could have taken place in the town without the Germans’ consent. The town’s Jews were forced out of their homes and taken to the market square, where they were ordered to weed the area by pulling up grass from between the cobblestones. While doing this, they were beaten and made to dance or perform exercises by residents from Jedwabne and nearby.

The massacre is a controversial topic in Poland; as the main perpetrators of the massacre were Poles, it goes against the commonly accepted Polish narrative of the Holocaust.

The Kielce pogrom

The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence toward the Jewish community centre’s gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce, Poland on 4 July 1946 by Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians during which 42 Jews were killed and more than 40 were wounded. Polish courts later sentenced nine of the attackers to death in connection with the crimes.

The Pogroms of 1189 and 1190

From 1189 to 1190, the anti-Jewish pogroms in London, York, and numerous other cities and towns displayed cruelty and barbarity never before seen by English Jews. Indeed, these acts of violence distinguished themselves as some of the worst atrocities committed against European Jews in the Middle Ages

The catalyst for the anti-Jewish violence in 1189 and 1190 was the coronation of King Richard I on September 3, 1189. In addition to Richard’s Christian subjects, many prominent English Jews arrived at Westminster Abbey to pay homage to their new king. However, many Christian Englishmen harboured superstitions against Jews being present at such a holy occasion, and the Jewish attendees were flogged and thrown out of the banquet following the coronation. After the incident at Westminster Abbey, a rumour spread that Richard had ordered the English to kill the Jews. Christians attacked the predominantly Jewish neighbourhood of Old Jewry, setting the Jews’ stone houses on fire at night and killing those who tried to escape. When news of the slaughter reached King Richard, he was outraged, but only managed to punish a few of the assailants because of their large numbers.

When Richard left on the Third Crusade, the Jews of the village of King’s Lynn attacked a Jew who converted to Christianity. A mob of seafarers rose up against Lynn’s Jews, burned down their houses, and killed many. Similar attacks occurred in the towns of Colchester, Thetford, Ospringe, and Lincoln. While their houses were ransacked, the Jews of Lincoln managed to save themselves by taking refuge in the city’s castle. On March 7, 1190, attacks in Stamford, Lincolnshire killed many Jews, and on March 18, 57 Jews were massacred in Bury St. Edmonds. However, the bloodiest of the pogroms took place from the 16th to the 17th of March in the city of York, staining its history forever.

sources

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Pogroms-1189-1190/

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history–hundreds-of-jews-massacred-in-jedwabne-pogrom

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-711642

Click to access jews%20of%20limerick%2050.pdf

98 years ago: The Limerick Pogrom

https://www.theirishstory.com/2020/07/05/revisiting-the-limerick-pogrom-of-1904/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kielce_pogrom

What Were Pogroms?

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The Kraków Pogrom—The Pogrom After the Holocaust

I know this will be disputed by many Poles reading this blog, however, this did happen. It happened only a few months after World War II ended in Europe. In fact, it was only 95 days after the end of the Holocaust.

It all started on 27 June 1945, a Jewish woman was brought to a local police station falsely accused of attempting to abduct a child. Despite the fact that the investigation revealed that the mother had left her child in the care of the suspect, rumours started to spread that a Jewish woman abducted a child in order to kill it.

On 11 August 1945, a crowd of Polish citizens broke into the Kupa synagogue in Kraków’s Kazimierz district during Shabbat services, destroying the synagogue and setting it on fire, killing at least one person in the process and wounding an unknown number of Jews who had been at prayer. Jews were attacked and robbed in the neighbouring streets, and there were also attacks on Jewish apartments.

Earlier that day, an attempt to seize a 13-year-old boy who was throwing stones at the synagogue was made, but he escaped and rushed to the nearby marketplace screaming, “Help me, the Jews have tried to kill me.”

Instantly the crowd broke into the Kupa Synagogue and started beating Jews, who had been praying at the Saturday morning Shabbat service, and the Torah scrolls were burned. The Jewish hostel was also attacked. Jewish men, women, and children were beaten up on the streets; their homes were broken into and robbed. Some Jews wounded during the pogrom were hospitalized and later were beaten in the hospitals again. One of the pogrom victims witnessed:

“I was carried to the second precinct of the militia where they called for an ambulance. There were five more people over there, including a badly wounded Polish woman. In the ambulance I heard the comments of the escorting soldier and the nurse who spoke about us as Jewish crust whom they have to save, and that they shouldn’t be doing this because we murdered children, that all of us should be shot. We were taken to the hospital of St. Lazarus at Kopernika Street. I was first taken to the operating room. After the operation, a soldier appeared who said that he will take everybody to jail after the operation. He beat up one of the wounded Jews waiting for an operation. He held us under a cocked gun and did not allow us to take a drink of water. A moment later two railroad men appeared and one said, ‘It’s a scandal that a Pole does not have the civil courage to hit a defenceless person’, and he hit a wounded Jew. One of the hospital inmates hit me with a crutch. Women, including nurses, stood behind the doors threatening us that they were only waiting for the operation to be over in order to rip us apart.”

Although the pogrom of the Krakow Jews remains overshadowed by the more widely known bloody Kielce pogrom of 1946, both instances of anti-Jewish aggression are structurally similar. In both Kraków and Kielce, a spark was ignited by a rumour about ritual murders committed by Jews on Polish children. The belief in this superstition dating back to the Middle Ages was then completely real and widespread in Poland. The postwar, modernized version of a blood libel said that “exhausted Jews would infuse themselves with the blood of Christians.”

There is one record of a death relating to Kraków events in the archives of the Forensic Medicine Department in Kraków. The victim was a 56-year-old Auschwitz survivor Róża Berger, shot while standing behind closed doors.

She escaped Kraków during the war and was deported to Auschwitz in August of 1944 (prisoner identification number 89186) with her daughter and granddaughter. After the liberation of Auschwitz, she returned to Kraków where she was shot and killed while standing behind closed doors in her home during the Pogrom on 11 August 1945. She was buried in the New Kraków Jewish Cemetery at 55 Miodowa Street.

This is what makes it even sadder, she survived the most horrible place on earth, just to be murdered in the relative safety of her own home.

sources

https://polin.pl/en/krakow-pogrom

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history–krakow-pogrom-ends-with-synagogue-demolished-at-least-one-dead

The Jedwabne Pogrom—July 10, 1941

I knew this is going to be a controversial blog, even though there should not be any controversy about it. It is based on facts, but unfortunately, there are quite a few people who don’t want to accept the facts.

Today, July 10, marks the 81st anniversary of the Jedwabne pogrom, a horrific event in the Holocaust when Polish residents of the town of Jedwabne, in cooperation with German police, massacred at least 340 Jews living there.

Polish-American scholar Jan Gross published a controversial account of the pogrom entitled Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland, which revealed that while Germans allowed the pogrom to occur, it was the Polish townspeople who murdered their Jewish neighbors.

Jedwabne was one of the territories occupied by the Soviet Union following the respective Nazi German and Soviet invasions of Poland at the start of the war, and the Russians even put up a statue of USSR founder Vladimir Lenin in the town center. This, according to some historians, raised some tensions as at the start, the Jews welcomed the Soviets over the prospect of Nazi Germany.

On 10 July 1941 Polish men from nearby villages began arriving in Jedwabne, intending to participate in the premeditated murder of the Jewish inhabitants of the town. The town’s Jews were forced out of their homes and taken to the market square, where they were ordered to weed the area by pulling up grass from between the cobblestones. While doing this, they were beaten and made to dance or perform exercises by residents from Jedwabne and nearby.

40–50 Jewish men were forced to demolish a statue of Lenin in a nearby square and then carry part of the statue on a wooden stretcher to the market square then to a nearby barn, they were also forced to sing communist songs. The local rabbi, Awigdor Białostocki, and the kosher butcher, Mendel Nornberg, led the procession. According to an eyewitness, Szmuel Wasersztajn, the group was taken to the barn, where they were made to dig a pit and throw the statue in. They were then killed and buried in the same pit.

Most of Jedwabne’s remaining Jews, around 300 men, women, children, and infants, were then locked inside the barn, which was set on fire, probably using kerosene from former Soviet supplies. This group was buried in the barn near the first group. The 2001 exhumation found a mass grave within the barn’s foundations and another close to the foundations.

The IPN- Institute of National Remembrance issued a report On 9 July 2002 on the findings of its two-year investigation.

The IPN report stated: “From the morning hours the routing of the Jewish populace from their homes and assembly in the town square went on. They were ordered to pull out the grass protruding from between the stones with which the square was paved”

The IPN also concluded that, undoubtedly, at the very least, the Polish locals had played a crucial and essential role in carrying out the pogrom.

The IPN found that the “Polish population” had played a “decisive role in the execution of the criminal plan.” The IPN wrote: “On the basis of the evidence gathered in the investigation, it is not possible to determine the reasons for the passive behavior of the majority of the town’s population in the face of the crime. In particular, it cannot be determined whether this passivity resulted from the acceptance of the crime or intimidation caused by the brutality of the perpetrators’ acts.”

The Jedwabne pogrom wasn’t the only pogrom, but it is the most infamous one. In August 1945, a few months after the war, there was also a pogrom in Krakow.

sources

Polish Pogroms

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-711642

https://ipn.gov.pl/en/about-the-institute

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2013-07-10/ty-article/.premium/1941-jedwabne-folk-kill-the-towns-jews/0000017f-df22-df9c-a17f-ff3adea30000

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/poland-marks-80th-anniversary-of-jedwabne-pogrom-1.4619548

https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/mass-murder-of-jews-jedwabne-summer-1941,661

https://web.archive.org/web/20190929152459/https://www.polin.pl/en/news/2016/07/09/pogrom-in-jedwabne-course-of-events

https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/wyrzykowski/wasersztein-testimony.html

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Iași pogrom-Holocaust in Romania

This is a point I have made before, the Holocaust was not perpetrated by Germans alone, there were many more who committed awful crimes. If we only put the blame on the Germans we allow others to get away with it.

During World War II, one of the worst massacres of war took place in Romania. In the country’s second city of Iași. More than 13,000 people, approximately about 10 % of the population, were murdered in the space of a few days, simply because they were Jews. More than 80 years after the Iasi pogrom, most people in Romania know little about these atrocities.

In September 1940, Ion Antonescu rose to power in Romania, and systematic persecution of the Jews began.

On 28 June 1941, Romanian and German soldiers, police, and masses of residents participated in an assault on the Jews of Iasi. Thousands were murdered in their homes and in the streets; additional thousands were arrested and taken to police headquarters. The next day, Romanian soldiers shot thousands of Jews who had been held in the police headquarters yard. The approximately 4,300 survivors of the assault and other Jews who had been rounded up from all parts of Iasi, were loaded onto sealed boxcars and deported. About 2,600 died en route due to thirst and suffocation.

Romania, an ally of the Third Reich, prior to entering the the war, It was commonly but wrongly believed, in Romania, that Communism was the work of the Jews, and Romania’s coming entry into the war against the Soviet Union – a war billed as a struggle to “annihilate” the forces of “Judeo-Bolshevism”- greatly served to increase the anti-Semitic paranoia of the Romanian government.

Prior to the Second World War, the Romanian Jewish community was one of the largest in Europe

Marcel, a Jewish survivor from Iași recounted:

“I remember that the real danger for the Jews started on June 29, 1941. It was a big surprise for all the Jews. We were forced to wear the yellow stars of David on our clothes. We could not buy or sell food anymore. For certain hours, we didn’t have access to some public places. At that time there were cellars where Jews hid. It was difficult for the police to search the cellars. So, in order to make us come to the commissariat, they distributed a sort of ticket with the word “Free” written on it in a Jewish district. The Jews thought that if they showed up at the commissariat they could be set free, could again buy commodities. But it was a trap – instead of receiving freedom, we met death”

A report which was commissioned by, and also accepted by the Romanian government, found that:

“Those participating in the manhunt launched on the night of June 28/29 were, first and foremost, the Iași police, backed by the Bessarabia police and gendarmerie units. Other participants were army soldiers, young people armed by SSI agents, and mobs who robbed and killed, knowing they would not have to account for their actions….In addition to informing on Jews, directing soldiers to Jewish homes and refuges, and even breaking into homes themselves, some Romanian residents of Iaşi also took part in the arrests and humiliation forced upon the convoys of Jews on their way to the Chestura. The perpetrators included neighbors of Jews, known and lesser-known supporters of antisemitic movements, students, poorly-paid, low-level officials, railway workers, craftsmen frustrated by Jewish competition, “white-collar” workers, retirees and military veterans”

At times those who were involved in the crimes, showed some ‘mercy’ by just shooting their victims. An eyewitness later testified:

“Sometimes, those who attempted to defend the Jews were killed with them. This was the case with engineer Naum, a gentile, brother-in-law of Chief Public Prosecutor Casian. Naum, a former Assistant Professor of Medical Chemistry at the Iași Institute of Hygiene, well-known in select circles as an eloquent defender of liberal views, attempted to save a Jew on Pacurari Street, outside the Ferdinand Foundation. The Romanian officer who was about to kill the Jew said to Naum, ‘You dog, die with the kike you are defending!’, and shot him point-blank. The priest Razmerita was shot on Sararie Street while attempting to save several Jews, dying with the victims he was trying to protect. While trying to defend some Jews on Zugravilor Street, outside Rampa, the lathe operator Ioan Gheorghiu was killed by railroad workers”

During the pogrom, the Romanian authorities, together with German soldiers, not only murdered thousands of Jewish residents of Iasi, but also sought to destroy an entire community that had existed for more than 300 years.

The Romanian People’s Tribunals were conducted in 1946 and a total of 57 people were tried for the Iași pogroms: eight from the higher military echelons, the prefect of Iași county and the mayor of Iași, four military figures, 21 civilians and 22 gendarmes. One hundred sixty-five witnesses, mostly survivors of the pogrom, were called to the stand.

sources

http://yahadmap.org/#village/ia-i-yas-jassy-iassy-iassi-ia-i-romania.687

Click to access chapter_05.pdf

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/this-month/june/1941-3.html

https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/news-archive/commemorating-80th-anniversary-iasi-pogromhttps://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/revisited/20220325-romania-s-ia%C8%99i-pogrom-one-of-the-worst-massacres-of-jews-during-wwii

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The August 11 Krakow pogrom.

Kupa

The 11th of August marked the 76th anniversary of the August 11 Krakow pogrom. August 11,1945, is a date after Poland was liberated ,in fact it is nearly 4 months after the war in Europe had ended.

The text below comes directly from 2 sources, which I also shall link at the bottom of the blog. Both links will also mention other pogroms which happened in Poland shortly after the war in Europe. Despite the fact that the information comes from very reputable sources ,amongst them historian David Engel and eye witnesses, and despite one link is from a Polish site there will still be people who deny these ever happened. Since the war wasn’t officially over yet they were war crimes committed by Polish citizens. Some will say they were not Polish but communists, as if communist is a nationality.

The really disgusting thing here that the one fatality ,although there may have been more but could not be verified, was a lady who had survived Auschwitz.

“On August 11, 1945, during the Sabbath, there was a pogrom of the Jewish population in Krakow. The pretext for the incident was rumors that the bodies and blood of Christian children had been found in the synagogue.”

“The Jews who were praying on Saturday morning in the Kupa synagogue were attacked by the crowd gathered in the nearby square”

In Krakow, a Jewish woman was arrested in late June for allegedly attempting to kidnap and murder a Polish child. The arrest sparked dangerous rumors. Tension mounted throughout the summer, as the rumor circulated that the bodies of thirteen murdered Christian children had been discovered. By the beginning of August, the number of rumored corpses had grown to eighty. A mob gathered every Friday night and Saturday outside Kupa Synagogue in Kazimierz to throw stones at the building and at the Jews praying inside while screaming, laughing and taunting, behavior that did not stop even after guards were posted near the synagogue. Finally, the situation reached the boiling point.

On Saturday, August 11, 1945, a 13-year old Polish boy ran out of Kupa Synagogue screaming “Help! They want to murder me!” The crowd of about 60 Poles outside broke into the synagogue looking for the Christian children’s corpses. They destroyed and plundered the synagogue, tore Torah scrolls, and attacked not only the Jews who were there, but other Jews in the area. The synagogue was set on fire. Roza Berger, an Auschwitz survivor, was murdered; there may have been as many as four other casualties, but this remains unclear. The violence spread throughout the Kazimierz quarter of Krakow;robberies and beatings were recorded in a dozen different apartments. Five Jews were wounded, among them Hanna Zajdman. She gave an account of her experience to the Jewish Historical Commission on August 20, 1945. According to Zajdman’s account, even in the ambulance to the hospital the wounded were called “Jewish scum” by the soldier and the nurse who accompanied them. Once at the hospital they were beaten by other patients and by soldiers. They were threatened repeatedly, even by nurses, who said that, “they were only waiting for the surgery to be over in order to rip us apart.” The scourge of the pogroms had reached the big city.