In the Midst of Civilized Europe
The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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.
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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.
