In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The 1918-1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the Holocaust

by Jeffrey Veidlinger

Overview

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD * SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE

“The mass killings of Jews from 1918 to 1921 are a bridge between local pogroms and the extermination of the Holocaust. No history of that Jewish catastrophe comes close to the virtuosity of research, clarity of prose, and power of analysis of this extraordinary book. As the horror of events yields to empathetic understanding, the reader is grateful to Veidlinger for reminding us what history can do.”
—Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands

Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true.

Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers, and governmental officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems. In riveting prose, In the Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining moment of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250812124
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	488,897
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey Veidlinger is a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan. His books, which include The Moscow State Yiddish Theater and In the Shadow of the Shtetl, have won a National Jewish Book Award, the Barnard Hewitt Award for Theatre Scholarship, two Canadian Jewish Book Awards, and the J. I. Segal Award. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "Will a Slaughter of Jews Be Next European Horror?" 1

A Note on Sources, Numbers, Dates, and Place-Names 19

Part I War and Revolution, March 1881-December 1918

1 The Last Years of the Russian Empire 29

2 The Revolutions of 1917 43

3 The Central Rada of Ukraine 58

4 From the Hetmanate to the Directory 73

Part II The Ukrainian People's Republic, December 1918-March 1919

5 The Ovruch Pogrom 93

6 The Zhytomyr Pogrom 105

7 The Proskuriv Pogrom 133

8 The Second Zhytomyr Pogrom 155

Part III Power Vacuum, March 1919-August 1919

9 The Entente 167

10 Warlords 188

11 Months and Days 217

12 Poland and Ukraine on the World Stage 233

Part IV The Triumph of Bolshevism, August 1919-March 1921

13 The Volunteer Army 247

14 The Tetiiv Pogrom 275

15 The Polish-Soviet War 288

Part V Aftermath, 1921-1941

16 Refugees 307

17 The Schwarzbard Trial 331

18 The Interwar in Ukraine 343

19 The Onset of the Holocaust 355

Notes 377

Acknowledgments 446

Index 449

Editorial Reviews

Veidlinger’s book ranks alongside Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands in forcing our eyes eastwards. It is deeply researched and masterfully written, with a cool restraint that only intensifies its power.”
—The Telegraph

“Exemplary . . . Gripping . . . We now know much more about the pogroms of 1918–21 because of Veidlinger’s painstaking research, based on a vast trove of archival materials and reliance on at least nine languages. He has succeeded in shining a bright scholarly light on a much less well-known attempt to exterminate European Jews two decades before the Holocaust.”
—Literary Review

“An exhaustive, clearly written, deeply researched story of events in a time and place most of us know nearly nothing about . . . An important and scholarly book.”
—The Times (UK)

“Chillingly thorough . . . A vital history that draws a direct line from Eastern European antisemitic violence to the Holocaust.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Revelatory . . . Veidlinger’s crisp prose and extensive research makes the scale of the tragedy immediate and devastating. This is a vital addition to understanding how the Holocaust happened.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Highly recommended as a critical history analyzing the factors that led to the Holocaust… Veidlinger honors the victims of pogroms and ensures they are not forgotten in this important work.”
—Library Journal

“The mass killings of Jews in 1918–21 are a bridge between local pogroms and the extermination of the Holocaust. No history of that Jewish catastrophe comes close to the virtuosity of research, clarity of prose, and power of analysis of this extraordinary book. As the horror of events yields to empathetic understanding, the reader is grateful to Veidlinger for reminding us what history can do.”
—Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands

“A work of singular importance: a meticulous, original and deeply affecting historical account, one that provides new insights into the conditions that catalyzed mass-murder on an industrial scale.”
—Philippe Sands, author of East West Street

“In this extraordinary work Veidlinger disinters a largely forgotten history of tragic and portentous dimensions. Compelling and well-written, the book will find a broad audience. This is a story that needs to be told.”
—Ronald Grigor Suny, author of Stalin: Passage to Revolution

“In this deeply learned but highly readable book, Veidlinger demonstrates how the all-but-forgotten pogroms in the collapsing Russian Empire in 1918–21 set precedents for the horrors that were to follow just two decades later.”
—Zvi Gitelman, author of A Century of Ambivalence

From the Publisher

08/30/2021

Veidlinger (In the Shadow of the Shtetl), a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, details a little known antecedent to the Holocaust in this revelatory account. Between 1918 and 1921, over 100,000 Jews died as a result of more than 1,000 pogroms carried out in 500 places in what is now Ukraine. Utilizing survivor testimonies and secondary sources, Veidlinger outlines the history of violent anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire before WWI and describes the targeting of Jewish civilians by Polish military units as the war neared its end. False charges that Ukrainian Jews planned to install a Bolshevik government led to 167 pogroms carried out by militias connected to the newly formed Ukrainian People’s Republic in the first three months of 1919. Atrocities were also committed by the Russian White Army, which blamed Jews for the downfall of the czar. Veidlinger notes that American fears that the U.S. would be flooded by Jewish refugees led to the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which dramatically reduced the number of people allowed into the U.S. from Eastern Europe and thereby “ensured that America would be closed to the tens of thousands of European Jews desperate to flee the rise of fascism.” Veidlinger’s crisp prose and extensive research makes the scale of the tragedy immediate and devastating. This is a vital addition to understanding how the Holocaust happened. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"The mass killings of Jews in 1919 and 1920 are a bridge between local pogroms and the extermination of the Holocaust. No history of that Jewish catastrophe comes close to the virtuosity of research, clarity of prose, and power of analysis of this extraordinary book. As the horror of events yields to empathetic understanding, the reader is grateful to Veidlinger for reminding us what history can do."

Timothy Snyder

10/01/2021

In the introduction to this work, Veidlinger (history and Judaic studies, Univ. of Michigan; In the Shadow of the Shtetl) refers to the massacre of over one thousand Jewish civilians in Proskuriv, Ukraine, on February 15, 1919. This was only one of many such atrocities throughout Ukraine and Poland during this era. Between 1918 and 1921, more than 100,000 Jews were killed in pogroms, while others lost their homes and businesses, and many more were forced to flee. Throughout this book, Veidlinger provides a detailed account of these pogroms and demonstrates that they laid the groundwork for the Holocaust by fomenting an environment in which violence and blame were acceptable responses. By the time Nazi Germany occupied Eastern Europe, the region already had a history of persecuting and murdering Jews. The author also shows that the Holocaust was not an unexpected event as is sometimes claimed; in the 1920s, several publications wrote and expressed concern about local pogroms and warned that millions of Jews were in danger of international genocide. Veidlinger honors the victims of pogroms and ensures they are not forgotten in this important work. VERDICT Highly recommended as a critical history analyzing the factors that led to the Holocaust and for readers interested in post-Great War Europe and the Russian Civil War.—Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

Library Journal

★ 2021-08-19
A chillingly thorough study of how the Nazi extermination of Jews was foretold in Ukrainian pogroms 20 years earlier.

Based on extensive research in recently opened archives and newly available witness reports and trial records of the pogroms, Veidlinger—a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan and winner of the National Jewish Book Award, among other honors—finds a predictable pattern of scapegoating of Jews for the perceived excesses of Bolshevism. As the author unequivocally shows, the cycle was repeated and expanded by the Nazis two decades later. At the end of World War I, Eastern European boundaries shifted, and Jews deported from the war were displaced. As the Russian Revolution provoked a civil war, tensions in Ukrainian communities were heightened, and Jews became the convenient scapegoats. Hopes for a Ukrainian republic were dashed by Bolshevik incursions, and “militias acting as part of the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic initiated or authorized attacks on Jewish civilians” under the pretext that “the Jews were planning an uprising to install a Bolshevik government.” More than 100,000 Jews perished during the pogroms, which the author vividly depicts as “public, participatory, and ritualized.” He notes how early on, “they took place in a carnivalesque atmosphere of drunken singing and dancing; crowds allowed for a diffusion of responsibility, drawing in otherwise upright citizens and ordinary people who in different circumstances might not have joined the proceedings.” The White Army, composed of czarist remnants, also attacked the Jews as perceived allies of the Bolsheviks. Veidlinger also chronicles the international outcry at these pogroms, which helped to instigate important Jewish refugee relief programs while also hardening nations like the U.S. against allowing the immigration of desperate Jewish displaced persons. The last part of the book is an elucidating discussion of how the massive refugee problem galvanized the rise of right-wing politics, especially in Germany.

A vital history that draws a direct line from Eastern European antisemitic violence to the Holocaust.

Kirkus Reviews