The End of Everything? Pogroms in Wars and Revolutions

Abstract

In spring 1918, as word of mass Jewish casualties began to spread, Elias Tcherikower concluded that something entirely unprecedented was taking place in the history of anti-Jewish violence. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, and educated in imperial Russian schools, the indefatigable public activist and scholar of Jewish life had sailed across the Atlantic not long after World War I broke out. In NewYork, he took part in a bustling Yiddish cultural scene, contributing articles and opinion pieces to left-leaning Zionist magazines and journals. But fastmoving events brought him back to a crumbling empire. Following the shock waves of the Bolshevik Revolution, Tcherikower shifted his attention squarely to documenting the civil war pogroms. A member of the Central Committee of Kyiv for Relief of Pogrom Victims, he played an instrumental role in gathering documentary evidence of the atrocities. According to a notice in a Yiddish newspaper, “everything” pertaining to the violence against, and plunder of, Jewish