In the midst of civilized Europe The pogroms of 1918-1921 and the onset of the Holocaust

Veidlinger (In the Shadow of the Shtetl), a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, details a little known antecedent to the Holocaust in this revelatory account. Between 1918 and 1921, over 100,000 Jews died as a result of more than 1,000 pogroms carried out in 500 places in what is now Ukraine. Utilizing survivor testimonies and secondary sources, Veidlinger outlines the history of violent anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire before WWI and describes the targeting of Jewish civilians by Polish military units as the war neared its end. False charges that Ukrainian Jews planned to install a Bolshevik government led to 167 pogroms carried out by militias connected to the newly formed Ukrainian People's Republic in the first three months of 1919. Atrocities were also committed by the Russian White Army, which blamed Jews for the downfall of the czar. Veidlinger notes that American fears that the U.S. would be flooded by Jewish refugees led to the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which dramatically reduced the number of people allowed into the U.S. from Eastern Europe and thereby "ensured that America would be closed to the tens of thousands of European Jews desperate to flee the rise of fascism." Veidlinger's crisp prose and extensive research makes the scale of the tragedy immediate and devastating. This is a vital addition to understanding how the Holocaust happened. (Oct.)

In the introduction to this work, Veidlinger (history and Judaic studies, Univ. of Michigan; In the Shadow of the Shtetl) refers to the massacre of over one thousand Jewish civilians in Proskuriv, Ukraine, on February 15, 1919. This was only one of many such atrocities throughout Ukraine and Poland during this era. Between 1918 and 1921, more than 100,000 Jews were killed in pogroms, while others lost their homes and businesses, and many more were forced to flee. Throughout this book, Veidlinger provides a detailed account of these pogroms and demonstrates that they laid the groundwork for the Holocaust by fomenting an environment in which violence and blame were acceptable responses. By the time Nazi Germany occupied Eastern Europe, the region already had a history of persecuting and murdering Jews. The author also shows that the Holocaust was not an unexpected event as is sometimes claimed; in the 1920s, several publications wrote and expressed concern about local pogroms and warned that millions of Jews were in danger of international genocide. Veidlinger honors the victims of pogroms and ensures they are not forgotten in this important work. VERDICT Highly recommended as a critical history analyzing the factors that led to the Holocaust and for readers interested in post-Great War Europe and the Russian Civil War.--Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

A chillingly thorough study of how the Nazi extermination of Jews was foretold in Ukrainian pogroms 20 years earlier. Based on extensive research in recently opened archives and newly available witness reports and trial records of the pogroms, Veidlinger--a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan and winner of the National Jewish Book Award, among other honors--finds a predictable pattern of scapegoating of Jews for the perceived excesses of Bolshevism. As the author unequivocally shows, the cycle was repeated and expanded by the Nazis two decades later. At the end of World War I, Eastern European boundaries shifted, and Jews deported from the war were displaced. As the Russian Revolution provoked a civil war, tensions in Ukrainian communities were heightened, and Jews became the convenient scapegoats. Hopes for a Ukrainian republic were dashed by Bolshevik incursions, and "militias acting as part of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic initiated or authorized attacks on Jewish civilians" under the pretext that "the Jews were planning an uprising to install a Bolshevik government." More than 100,000 Jews perished during the pogroms, which the author vividly depicts as "public, participatory, and ritualized." He notes how early on, "they took place in a carnivalesque atmosphere of drunken singing and dancing; crowds allowed for a diffusion of responsibility, drawing in otherwise upright citizens and ordinary people who in different circumstances might not have joined the proceedings." The White Army, composed of czarist remnants, also attacked the Jews as perceived allies of the Bolsheviks. Veidlinger also chronicles the international outcry at these pogroms, which helped to instigate important Jewish refugee relief programs while also hardening nations like the U.S. against allowing the immigration of desperate Jewish displaced persons. The last part of the book is an elucidating discussion of how the massive refugee problem galvanized the rise of right-wing politics, especially in Germany. A vital history that draws a direct line from Eastern European antisemitic violence to the Holocaust. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.