Nadene Goldfoot
The Edict of Expulsion was a royal decree expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England that was issued by Edward I on 18 July 1290; it was the first time a European state is known to have permanently banned their presence. Jews were banned from England for 365 years!
Pogrom in Russian means "DESTRUCTION." It's an organized massacre for the annihilation of any body or class, especially with governmental collusion; more specially one directed against Jews.
The term, Pogrom, was first used in English at the time of the anti-Jewish outbreaks organized by the BLACK HUNDREDS IN RUSSIA IN 1905, but is often applied to earlier Russian outbreaks from 1881 onward.
My paternal grandmother, my Bubbie, Zlata Jermulowske, born in 1880s, had been in a pogrom in Lazdijai, Lithuania and in Poland where both her legs were broken. She lived with bowed legs thereafter, and went from about 4'9" to 4'6" tall; very very short. She arrived in Idaho before 1900. Bubbie was kept from any education in Russia/Poland, so was illiterate. She produced 2 grandchildren with PhDs, and many other grandchildren who were teachers. One male was in charge of his whole state's hospital finances by keeping them in the black. One worked for the VA in finances.
In the nineteenth century, much of the region was under Russian control. Antisemitism and official anti-Jewish policies often interrupted the growth of the Jewish community. Tensions escalated when the Russian government blamed the Jews for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. As a result, three years of anti-Jewish riots—known as pogroms—ensued. These and other antisemitic outbursts in the Russian Empire dealt a massive blow to Jewish communities in the region. Many Jews were killed and their homes were plundered; in response, thousands of Jews looked to leave Lithuania, with many emigrating to South Africa and the United States. Their goal was freedom and economic security. More ideologically driven younger Jews emigrated to Palestine, spurred by the dream of establishing a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland.
Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906).
The pogrom in Fiddler on the Roof is based on the real-life Kishinev pogrom that took place in 1903. The pogrom was a violent attack on Jewish people in Kishinev, a city in imperial Russia, that resulted in the deaths of 49 Jews, the rape of many Jewish women, and damage to 1,500 Jewish homes. The pogrom was prompted by rumors of Jewish ritual murder, and if they knew anything about Jews, Jews do not eat blood or use blood in any way, so these rumors are based on absolutely false lies so far from truth that it makes me shudder!
In the musical, Tevye, the dairyman, receives news of pogroms and expulsions from a bookseller while delivering milk. The news is delivered as Tevye asks God, "Whom would it hurt 'If I Were a Rich Man'?".
The author, Sholem Aleichem, and Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, worked together to raise funds for the victims of the pogrom. Aleichem also drew on his experiences for Tevye and His Daughters.
During rehearsals, one of the stars, Jewish actor Zero Mostel, feuded with Robbins, whom he held in contempt because Robbins had cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee and hid his Jewish heritage from the public. (Mostel, conversely, was admired for his confrontational testimony before the committee that led to his blacklisting in the 1950s.
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, a thousand synagogues burned, and over seven thousand Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.
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 (Libya) pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom (Poland) , the 1947 Aleppo (Syria) pogrom, and the 1955 Istanbul (Turkey) pogrom.
On July 1, 1946, a nine-year-old non-Jewish boy, Henryk Blaszczyk, left his home in Kielce, without informing his parents. When he returned on July 3, the boy told his parents and the police, in an effort to avoid punishment for wandering off, that he had been kidnapped and hidden in the basement of the local Jewish Committee building on 7 Planty Street. The Committee building sheltered up to 180 Jews, and housed various Jewish institutions operating in Kielce at the time. The local police went to investigate the alleged crime in the building, and even though Henryk's story began to unravel (the building, for example, had no basement), a large crowd of angry Poles, including one thousand workers from the Ludwikow steel mill, gathered outside the building.
Polish soldiers and policemen entered the building and called upon the Jewish residents to surrender any weapons. After an unidentified individual fired a shot, officials and civilians fired upon the Jews inside the building, killing some of them. Outside, the angry crowd viciously beat Jews fleeing the shooting, or driven onto the street by the attackers, killing some of them. By day's end, civilians, soldiers and police had killed 42 Jews and injured 40 others. Two non-Jewish Poles died as well, killed either by Jewish residents inside the building or by fellow non-Jewish Poles for offering aid to the Jewish victims.
The term Kielce pogrom refers to a violent massacre of Jews in the southeastern Polish town of Kielce on July 4, 1946.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Mostel
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/jewish-life-lithuania-holocaust
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