1941 pogroms in eastern Poland explained
Immediately following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in at least 219 localities in the lands that had been part of Poland prior to 1939 and were occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941.
Background
According to political scientists Jeffrey Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, the presence of a political threat is the strongest explanatory factor for why pogroms occurred in some locations but not others: "Pogroms were most likely to occur where there were lots of Jews, where those Jews advocated national equality with non-Jews, and where parties advocating national equality were popular."
Pogroms
Anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in at least 219 localities in the eastern borderlands of Poland, i.e. lands that had been part of Poland prior to 1939 and were occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941. Among these pogroms were the Jedwabne pogrom, Lviv pogroms (1941), Szczuczyn pogrom, and Wąsosz pogrom. Kopstein and Wittenberg estimate around twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand "deaths resulting from neighbor-on-neighbor violence in summer 1941", significantly less than the 1918–1920 pogroms in Poland.
Kopsten and Wittenberg also write that "Yet pogroms were relatively rare events." The 219 pogroms represent "just 9 percent of all localities in the region where Jews and non-Jews dwelled together. Most communities never experienced a pogrom and most ordinary non-Jews never attacked Jews".
List of pogroms
- Radziłów pogrom by local Poles on 7 July 1941.
- Jedwabne pogrom in Jedwabne, carried out by its Polish inhabitants on 10 July 1941.
- Lviv pogroms in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by German security forces, Ukrainian nationalists, and the local majority Polish population. from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941.
- Szczuczyn pogrom in Szczuczyn, carried out by its Polish inhabitants in June 1941. It was stopped by passing German soldiers.
- Tykocin pogrom in Tykocin, perpetrated by personnel of Einsatzgruppe B on August 25, 1941.
- Wąsosz pogrom in Wąsosz, carried out by Poles on 5 July 1941.
Sources
- Book: Kopstein . Jeffrey S. . Wittenberg . Jason . Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust . 2018 . Cornell University Press . 978-1-5017-1527-3 . en.
Further reading
- Lower . Wendy. Wendy Lower . Pogroms, mob violence and genocide in western Ukraine, summer 1941: varied histories, explanations and comparisons . Journal of Genocide Research . 2011 . 13 . 3 . 217–246 . 10.1080/14623528.2011.606683. 143549036 .
- Book: Tryczyk . Mirosław . The Towns of Death: Pogroms Against Jews by Their Neighbors . 2021 . Rowman & Littlefield . 978-1-7936-3764-2 . en.
- Book: Dobroszycki . Lucjan . Gurock . Jeffrey S. . The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the Ussr, 1941-1945 . 1993 . M.E. Sharpe . 978-1-56324-173-4 . en . Zbikowski . Andrzej . Local Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Occupied Territories of Eastern Poland, June—July 1941.
- Persak, Krzysztof. "Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Summer 1941" on Virtual Shtetl [Accessed: 8.08.2023]
- Grądzka-Rejak, Martyna. "Extermination of Jews in the Eastern Borderlands" on Polish Righteous [Accessed: 8.08.2023]
