- Pogroms is a Russian word meaning “to demolish violently” and was coined to refer to attacks on Jewish villages. They often included sacking and burning Jewish homes, businesses, and places of worship; stealing or destroying Jews’ possessions; beating up Jewish men and sexually assaulting Jewish women; and murder.
- While the term originally referred to this phenomenon in the Russian empire, it is now used to refer to genocidal incidents against Jews across history and in other parts of the world.
- Some examples of pogroms include:
- the Odessa pogrom of 1821
- a series of pogroms across Ukraine and southern Russia in 1881-84
- Kristallnacht, or the “night of broken glass,” perpetrated by the Nazis in 1938
- Iasi pogrom, which marked the turning point of the Nazi-allied Romanian government pursing the genocide of Jews in 1941
- The Farhud, when mob violence against Baghdadi Jews broke out in 1941
- 1947 pogroms, when Jews in countries including Syria and Yemen were murdered following the UN vote to confirm partition of Israel between Jews and Muslims
Sources:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-were-pogroms/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/previous-the-20th-century-pogroms-against-the-jews-of-the-middle-east-will-christians-suffer-the-same-fate/2019/07/24/
