The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19: Prelude to the Holocaust

Between 1918 and 1921 an estimated 100,000 Jewish people were killed, maimed or tortured in pogroms in Ukraine. Hundreds of Jewish communities were burned to the ground and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless and destitute, including orphaned children. A number of groups were responsible for these brutal attacks, including the Volunteer Army, a faction of the Russian White Army.
The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19: Prelude to the Holocaust is a vivid and horrifying account of the atrocities committed by the Volunteer Army, written by Nokhem Shtif, an eminent Yiddish linguist and social activist who joined the relief efforts on behalf of the pogrom survivors in Kiev. Shtif’s testimony, published in 1923, was born from his encounters there and from the weighty archive of documentation amassed by the relief workers. This was one of the earliest efforts to systematically record human rights atrocities on a mass scale.
Originally written in Yiddish and here skillfully translated and introduced by Maurice Wolfthal, The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19 brings to light a terrible and historically neglected series of persecutions that foreshadowed the Holocaust by twenty years. It is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of human rights, Jewish studies, Russian and Soviet studies, and Ukraine studies.
The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19: Prelude to the Holocaust
By Nokhem Shtif, translated and annotated, with an introduction by Maurice Wolfthal | June 2019
118 pp. | 3 B&W illustrations | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Hardback: 9781783747450
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783747467
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783747474
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783747481
ISBN XML: 9781783747498
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0176
BIC subject codes: HBLW (20th century history), HBTZ (Genocide and ethnic cleansing), JFSR1 (Jewish studies); BISAC: HIS022000 (HISTORY / Jewish), HIS010010 (HISTORY / Europe / Eastern), HIS037070 (HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century)
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Preface
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Introduction
Maurice Wolfthal
Further Reading
The Pogroms in Ukraine: The Period of the Volunteer Army
Nokhem Shtif
Preface
- The Situation of the Jews in Ukraine before the Arrival of Denikin’s Volunteer Army
- Before the Pogroms and During the Pogroms
- The Volunteer Army’s Own Style of Pogrom
- The Causes of the Pogroms. Pogroms as Part of the Military and Political Program. The Connection to the High Command.
List of Jewish Communities that Were Destroyed
Sources
Index
© 2019 Nokhem Shtif, translated and annotated by Maurice Wolfthal, CC BY 4.0

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Attribution should include the following information: Nokhem Shtif, The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918–19: Prelude to the Holocaust. Translated and annotated by Maurice Wolfthal. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2019, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0176