Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918-21, by Nahum Gergel. 1950. YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science V: 237-252

Nahum Gergel: Facts and Fantasies About the Pogroms in the Ukraine During the Russian Civil War

This is an English-language version of a study originally published in 1928. (p. 337). This old study is relevant today because the 1919 pogroms have been mystified and folded into the later German-made Holocaust. Besides diluting the guilt of the Germans, this accentuates the notion of Jews as perpetual victims especially deserving of never-ending commemoration.

In addition, Jews have capitalized on the media attention and sympathy for the Jews, caused by the 1919 pogroms in Ukraine, to make onerous and false accusations of Poles killing tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms, and to do so for transparent political purposes. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2021/03/28/pogroms-1918-fake-news-confronted-by-the-us-government-jewish-disloyalty-1918-draft-dodging-united-states-government/

Nor is this just of historical interest: These old canards have been resurrected in recent years. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/polonophobic-memes-dusted-off-pogroms-hagen/

VERY MINIMAL POLISH PARTICIPATION IN THE POGROMS

Despite the presence of the Polish Army in Ukraine, Polish complicity in the pogroms was very minimal, as recognized by Gergel, who writes, “Petlura’s [Petliura’s] and Deniken’s armies along with the insurgents formed the central pogrom groups, and they were responsible for 1,013 pogroms…The Polish Army was responsible for 12 pogroms and 20 excesses.” (p. 244).

Of the 31,071 tabulated Jewish fatalities, the Polish Army accounts for only 134 of them. (p. 248). Gergel reiterates the unimportance of Polish acts against Jews, “Similarly, in the 32 pogroms made by the Polish Army, the number killed was insignificant. In 19 of these pogroms, that is in a majority, there were none killed at all.” (p. 250).

NOT ALL ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST JEWS ARE POGROMS!

With regards to the (made-up) pogroms in Poland around 1918-1920, a distinction was made between “excesses” and “pogroms”. Some modern Jews have objected to this distinction, insinuating that the term “excesses” just makes the acts against Jews seem less foul. Wrong again. None other than Jewish pogrom-researcher Gergel recognized and used this very distinction! He wrote, “We have designated as excesses those instances in which the violence did not assume a mass character.” (p. 238).

This is not to say that the distinction between “excesses” and “pogroms”, as used by Gergel, is necessarily objective. He provides no specific grounds for recognizing a “mass character” of an act against Jews. In addition, he embraces the term pogrom for acts in which not a single Jew died (e. g, p. 250).

It is easy to see that the term pogrom is an amorphous and emotional term. Let us update the situation. In the USA, in recent years, there has been a much-publicized rash of violence against Jews. But note that they are never called pogroms, or even excesses. Doing so would not fit the dominant narrative of Eastern Europeans as pogromists.

AN ADMISSION THAT POGROM KILLINGS ARE EXAGGERATED

Pogrom-researcher Nahum Gergel makes this stunning statement, “The source materials contain many contradictions about the number killed in the pogroms. Considering the general tendency of victims to exaggerate the number of killed, we have always taken the lowest figure given.” (p. 246. Emphasis added).

However, Gergel provides no grounds for accepting the lowest figures as any more reliable than the larger figures. What if the lowest figures available are themselves exaggerated?

RECOGNIZING THE CAUSE OF THE POGROMS

The pogroms are best understood as a belated popular reaction to the Russian Revolution and the Jewish role in it. In fact, of the 887 inferred pogroms that took place between late 1917 through April 1921, only 21 took place in the year after the Russian Revolution. (p. 240). The rest, which is the vast majority, came years later.

Gergel does not beat around the bush as he admits, “To combat Bolshevism, the atamans began to organize pogroms on the Jews which soon increased in violence and assumed the character of frightful massacres.” (p. 240).

NO JEW-DESTROYING CONSPIRACY: THE POGROMS WERE UNORGANIZED

Nahum Gergel evaluates his data: “Table VIII shows that in 10.6 percent of the victimized places there were no persons killed, in 35 percent there were more than fifty killed in each place and in 11 percent more than 100.” (p. 250). Totals of 200 Jews each killed occurred in only 33 places out of 531 (6.2%)(p. 251). All this points to the sporadic and unorganized nature of the Jew killings.

JEWISH DEATH TOLL: POGROM-RESEARCHER NAHUM GERGEL MIXES FACTS AND DUBIOUS CLAIMS

The bare minimum of documented Jewish deaths is identified by Gergel, “The number of killed includes the victims of 670 pogroms and 118 excesses. In the pogroms 30,501 persons were killed and in the excesses 570.” (p. 246). Ironic to his earlier warning about pogrom death tolls being exaggerated (p. 246), Gergel leaps to a figure of 50,000–60,000 total fatal victims (p. 249) but does not tell adequately justify his extrapolation to this total. (Others have embellished the pogroms to as much as 300,000 Jews killed).

In particular, Gergel does not explain how to reckon the unaccounted-for Jewish dead in the presumably missing information. Is it thousands of dead Jews, tens of thousands of dead Jews, or hundreds of thousands of dead Jews–that need to be added to the 30,501 documented Jewish dead?

In the end, the author makes some amazing statements, “In the case of the killed it was possible to assemble records of the numbers on the basis of cemetery and communal records.” (p. 252). On the basis of many materials, numbers of wounded equal the dead, so dead and wounded total 100,000. (p. 252).

Nahum Gergel apparently did not think through the implications of his claims. Since the data was based on cemetery and communal records, there had been plenty of time for significantly wounded Jews to die and get recorded as dead Jews. More fundamentally, if the Ukrainians were so determined to kill Jews, why did they only wound so many of them? How many injured Jews were hospitalized? Finally, how can there consistently be so many significantly wounded, compared to the dead, in the absence of good medical care under wartime conditions in 1919 Ukraine?

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For further study of the 1919 pogroms in Ukraine, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2023/04/20/pogroms-in-ukraine-in-1919-false-equivalence-with-the-later-nazis-non-jewish-victims-of-pogroms-ignored-the-forgotten-mennonites-khmelnytsky-uprising-provoked-by-jews-1918-polish-ukrainian-war-a/