Immediately following the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in at least 219 localities in the lands that had been part of Poland prior to 1939 and were occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941.[1]
Background
According to political scientists
Jeffrey Kopstein and
Jason Wittenberg, the presence of a political threat is the strongest explanatory factor for why pogroms occurred in some locations but not others: "Pogroms were most likely to occur where there were lots of Jews, where those Jews advocated national equality with non-Jews, and where parties advocating national equality were popular."[2]
Kopsten and Wittenberg also write that "Yet pogroms were relatively rare events." The 219 pogroms represent "just 9 percent of all localities in the region where Jews and non-Jews dwelled together. Most communities never experienced a pogrom and most ordinary non-Jews never attacked Jews".[1]
Lviv pogroms in
Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by German security forces, Ukrainian nationalists, and the local majority Polish population. from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941.
Szczuczyn pogrom in
Szczuczyn, carried out by its Polish inhabitants in June 1941. It was stopped by passing German soldiers.
Kopstein, Jeffrey S.; Wittenberg, Jason (2018). Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust. Cornell University Press.
ISBN978-1-5017-1527-3.
Further reading
Lower, Wendy (2011). "Pogroms, mob violence and genocide in western Ukraine, summer 1941: varied histories, explanations and comparisons". Journal of Genocide Research. 13 (3): 217–246.
doi:
10.1080/14623528.2011.606683.
S2CID143549036.
Tryczyk, Mirosław (2021). The Towns of Death: Pogroms Against Jews by Their Neighbors. Rowman & Littlefield.
ISBN978-1-7936-3764-2.
Zbikowski, Andrzej (1993). "Local Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Occupied Territories of Eastern Poland, June—July 1941". In Dobroszycki, Lucjan; Gurock, Jeffrey S. (eds.). The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the Ussr, 1941-1945. M.E. Sharpe.
ISBN978-1-56324-173-4.