Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920

The first scholarly account of massive and fateful pogrom waves, interpreted through the lens of folk culture and social psychology.

William W. Hagen (Author)

9780521738187, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 19 April 2018

566 pages, 17 b/w illus. 2 maps
22.7 x 15.3 x 2.9 cm, 0.76 kg

'… this impressively researched … a very important book about antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence in Poland.' Marsha L. Rozenblit, Austrian History Yearbook

Widespread anti-Jewish pogroms accompanied the rebirth of Polish statehood out of World War I and Polish–Soviet War. William W. Hagen offers the pogroms' first scholarly account, revealing how they served as brutal stagings by ordinary people of scenarios dramatizing popular anti-Jewish fears and resentments. While scholarship on modern anti-Semitism has stressed its ideological inspiration ('print anti-Semitism'), this study shows that anti-Jewish violence by perpetrators among civilians and soldiers expressed magic-infused anxieties and longings for redemption from present threats and suffering ('folk anti-Semitism'). Illustrated with contemporary photographs and constructed from extensive, newly discovered archival sources from three continents, this is an innovative work in east European history. Using extensive first-person testimonies, it reveals gaps - but also correspondences - between popular attitudes and those of the political elite. The pogroms raged against the conscious will of new Poland's governors whilst Christians high and low sometimes sought, even successfully, to block them.

Introduction: culture and psychology of the Polish–Jewish relationship
Theoretical footnote: ethnic violence in social science and historiography
Part I. War, Hunger, Revolt: Galicia, 1914–1918: 1. Peacetime precursors, Russian invasion, and the first wartime pogroms, 1914–1916
2. West Galicia's Jews, 1917–1918: objects of envy, targets of rage
3. Polish dawn, Jewish midnight: the November 1918 Pogroms in West Galicia and Lwów
4. Reading the November Pogroms: rage, shame, denial, denunciations
Part II. National Independence's After-Tremors: 5. Jews in Russian Poland, 1914–1919: German friends, Russian enemies, Polish rivals, Zionist prophets
6. In National Freedom's morning light: disarray in Warsaw, social war in Galicia
Part III. Pogroms' Path Eastward, 1919–1920: 7. Soldierly antisemitism, Pinsk massacre, and Morgenthau's mission: pranks, exorcisms, explanations, exculpations
8. On apocalypse's edge: army and Jews during the Polish–Soviet War, 1920
9. In Armageddon's shadow: anti-Jewish violence in the Polish–Soviet War Zone, July-October 1920
10. In Eastern anarchy's orbit: Polish soldiery among Cossacks and anti-Bolshevik Warlords
Conclusion: lords of commerce, lords of communism – print antisemitism, popular anti-Judaism
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]