Pogrom

Pogrom
Plundering the Judengasse, a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt, on 22 August 1614
TargetPredominantly Jews
Additionally other ethnic groups

A pogrom[a] is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews.[1] The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement). Similar attacks against Jews which also occurred at other times and places became known retrospectively as pogroms.[2] Sometimes the word is used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incident, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906). After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, several pogroms occurred amidst the power struggles in Eastern Europe, including the Lwów pogrom (1918) and Kiev pogroms (1919). The most significant pogrom which occurred in Nazi Germany was the 1938 Kristallnacht. At least 91 Jews were killed, a further thirty thousand arrested and subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps,[10] a thousand synagogues burned, and over seven thousand Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.[11][12] Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iași pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – as well as the Jedwabne pogrom in German-occupied Poland. Post-World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom, and the 1947 Aleppo pogrom. In 1984 Sikh massacre, 3,000 Sikhs were killed brutally in the orderly pogrom.[13] In 2008, two attacks in the Occupied West Bank by Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs were labeled as pogroms by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.[14] In 2023, a Wall Street Journal editorial referred to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel as a pogrom.[15]


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  9. ^ Klier, John (2010). "Pogroms". The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The common usage of the term pogrom to describe any attack against Jews throughout history disguises the great variation in the scale, nature, motivation and intent of such violence at different times.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Atlantic was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Berenbaum2005p49 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gilbert30 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Bedi, Rahul (1 November 2009). "Indira Gandhi's death remembered". BBC. Archived from the original on 2 November 2009. Retrieved 2 November 2009. The 25th anniversary of Indira Gandhi's assassination revives stark memories of some 3,000 Sikhs killed brutally in the orderly pogrom that followed her killing
  14. ^ Koutsoukis, Jason (15 September 2008). "Settlers attack Palestinian village". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 14 November 2023. 'As a Jew, I was ashamed at the scenes of Jews opening fire at innocent Arabs in Hebron. There is no other definition than the term "pogrom" to describe what I have seen.'
  15. ^ "Opinion | Hamas Puts Its Pogrom on Video". The Wall Street Journal. 27 October 2023.