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

A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920, by Henry Abramson. 1999. Harvard University Press, Massachusetts

Pogroms in Ukraine: The Mutuality of Violence Between Jews and Ukrainians

The 1919 pogroms are increasingly mystified and folded into the later German-made Holocaust. This falsely conflates Ukrainian conduct with later German conduct, and thus serves to dilute German guilt. This book unintentionally serves as a corrective to this tendentiousness. We immediately grasp vast differences between the 1919 pogroms and the later German-made Holocaust in Ukraine.

SCALE AND CONTEXT OF THE 1919 POGROMS

Jews get a very disproportionate amount of attention for their losses during the 1918-1919 pogroms (50,000–60,000 deaths: p. 110, based on the detailed research of Nahum Gergel, with multiply-larger exaggerated figures rejected: p. 110). These relatively-puny Jewish deaths occurred during the Russian Civil War, in which nearly ten million people died! We hardly ever hear about that.

THE USUAL JUDEOCENTRIC CONTEXTUAL VACUUM. POGROMS AGAINST THE FORGOTTEN MENNONITES

Though usually presented as such, Jews were not the only ones that suffered within the context of wartime violence against minority groups.  Abramson makes these sage comments, “These statistics, do not, however, reveal anything about the pogroms perpetrated against other minorities. Mennonites, for example, suffered horribly during the revolutionary years. Pogromists were aware of their religious doctrine of pacifism, and would take brutal advantage of it, mobbing into their homes and repeatedly raping and murdering without fear of reprisal. Violence against Mennonites and other minorities has not yet been statistically evaluated…” (pp. 109-110). I don’t wonder why.

WERE NON-JEWS ACTUALLY MORE ACCUSTOMED TO POGROMS THAN JEWS?

The almost-ignored violence against non-Jewish communities can be generalized. Abramson elaborates, “Non-Jewish communities suffered many of the early attacks and, indeed, it has been argued that Jews fared slightly better than during this period. More accustomed to the pogrom phenomenon, they were better prepared to deal with local warlords and spontaneously offered ‘contributions’ to avoid violence.” (p. 113. Emphasis added). So non-Jews were more accustomed to pogroms than Jews! And yet Jews get all the attention.

JEWS, LIKE NON-JEWS, COULD OFTEN BUY THEIR SAFETY

Let us extend the foregoing. Jews as well as non-Jews could bribe the marauding armies to leave them alone. The author writes, “Indeed, failure to produce protection money was a major cause of pogroms.” (p. 116). Now, if the marauders had a special hankering for harming Jews, as we are always led to believe, bribery by Jews should have been useless. And yet the marauders were dissuaded from doing harm by bribes from Jews no less than by bribes from non-Jews.

POGROM DEATH TOLL: USUALLY MUCH EXAGGERATED

Abramson, again citing the pioneering work of Nahum Gergel, evaluates the 1919 pogroms, “Relatively few pogroms, however, were free of murder, and only 12 percent can be so counted. The most common number of deaths was between one and ten (36 percent of recorded pogroms); 88 percent claimed fewer than one hundred lives…” (p. 119, 124. Emphasis added). This is from 472 locations in which a death toll is known. The pattern is clear, and it suggests that the roughly 800 missed locations are unlikely to raise the overall death toll of 50,000–60,000 by multiples, as sometimes claimed. For example, if an additional 800 locations average 10 victims each, this adds only 8,000 to the total. This is unless many spectacularly large pogroms were, for some very mysterious reason, completely missed. To see my review of Nahum Gergel’s detailed study, please go to:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2023/04/20/nahum-gergel-pogroms-in-ukraine-in-1919-detailed-study-minimal-polish-complicity-pogrom-death-tolls-exaggerated/

FALSE EQUATION WITH THE LATER GERMAN-MADE HOLOCAUST

The pogroms clearly lacked central organization. They were primarily scattered events that usually claimed a very small number of Jewish victims. They bear no resemblance to the acts of the later Nazi Germans, wherein thousands of Jews were rounded up, at a time, and systematically shot (the Holocaust by Bullets) in highly organized fashion. In addition, no attempt was ever made during the pogroms to exterminate all of Ukraine’s Jewish population. In fact, at times, Jews participated in pogroms against other Jews. (p. 127).

Earlier, it was noted that Jews as well as non-Jews could often avert violence by paying bribes to the marauding armies. (p. 166). Note that this is completely different from the later Nazis, who almost never spared Jews as a result of bribes.

There is no evidence that Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura (Petlura), or anyone in the Directory, gave orders for soldiers to commit pogroms. (p. 132). However, Petliura is blamed for not stopping the pogroms, which begs the question about the degree of control of his units. (p. 139). In the case of the Nazi German Holocaust, the orders were obvious.

JEWISH COMMUNISM PROVOKED THE POGROMS, AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!

The events that comprise the Russian Revolution, with its disproportionate Jewish complicity, were over by late 1917. In his 200 Years Together, Alexander Solzhenitsyn notes that the massive influx of Jews into the Soviet apparatus subsequently occurred in late 1917 and early 1918. Note the timing. From Nahum Gergel’s data, the pogroms began in December 1918 and peaked during May-October 1919. (p. 114). So Jewish Communism was an obvious precursor and provocation of the pogroms.

POGROMS IN UKRAINE: THE UKRAINIAN-JEWISH CYCLE OF HATRED AND VENGEANCE

Throughout 1919, the cycle of revenge and violence escalated. Jews became progressively more attached to the new Soviet Communist system, and the Ukrainians took revenge by expanding and intensifying their pogroms. Abramson comments, “Newspaper articles appeared frequently in the Jewish press discussing the issue of Communism in general and, in particular, urging Jews to join the Red Army…Certainly, the motive of revenge for the pogroms was prominent among the new Jewish recruits…Of perhaps greater significance to the growing antagonism, Jews became particularly prominent in the dreaded Cheka, precursor to the NKVD and KGB…The growing Jewish support for the Communists reinforced anti-Semitic attitudes among Ukrainians…” (p. 151). How could it not?

The cycle persisted. Years later, a Jew assassinated Petliura on the (unsubstantiated) accusation that he ordered the pogroms, and Jewish Communists played a leading role in oppressing the Ukrainians, as during the genocidal Holodomor. The Ukrainians avenged these crimes by taking part in renewed pogroms under the Nazi German occupation (e. g, the “Aktion Petliura“: p. 172) and then played a large role as collaborators in the German-made Holocaust.

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JEWS AND NOT ONLY POLES PROVOKED THE KHMELNYTSKY REBELLION

The current narrative blames the revolt all on Poles, by saying that the Polish nobility directed the exploitation of Ukrainians and that the Jews were completely innocent, effectively nothing more than order-fulfillers of the Polish nobility. This has been likened to the Poles as the hammer and the Ukrainians as the anvil, with the unwitting Jews caught in the middle. This narrative is far from true. Jewish author Abramson writes, “For Ukrainians, the Jews were very much part of the ‘hammer,’ the economic machinery that extended and enforced Polish control over Ukraine.” (p. 32). Let us take this further. What if the Jewish exploitative acts actually corrupted the Polish nobility, making it more inclined to go along with the Jewish exploitation of Ukrainians?

AUSTRIANS SET THE UKRAINIANS AGAINST THE POLES IN THE 1918 POLISH-UKRAINIAN WAR

Jewish author Abramson confirms Polish sources as he writes, “Soon after its surrender in October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. The Poles scrambled to take L’viv [Lwow] and declare it part of a resurrected Poland, but by November 1 eastern Galicia was in Ukrainian hands as part of a secret agreement between the former Austrian governor of Galicia and the Central Rada.” (p. 153. Emphasis added).