The Response of the Yishuv and the Zionist Movement to the Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-1920

Abstract

Between 1918 and 1920 there were hundreds of pogroms in Ukraine, during which some 100,000 Jews were killed or wounded. The pogroms took place against the backdrop of a bloody civil war between the Bolsheviks and their many opponents. The years of massacres in the Ukraine were years of optimism mixed with trepidation in the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Eretz Israel. The Balfour Declaration and the beginning of the British military government in October 1918 heralded the beginning of a new life for the Jews in the Holy Land. This article examines when the Jews of Eretz Israel first received word of the pogroms and how they and the Zionist leadership responded to the Ukrainian bloodbath that took 60,000 Jewish lives. Two aspects of the response are examined. The first is how various components of the community reacted to the pogroms – as individuals, as groups, and through the various published reports about the pogroms that appeared during this period. The second is the Zionist leadership’s response to the bloodbath, which didn’t necessarily correspond to the response of the Yishuv and was motivated by feasibility considerations that didn’t necessarily favor the refugees who had survived the pogroms.

Also, in this article I examine the position of the Zionist leadership primarily through the formulation of its policy of immigration to Eretz Israel, which could have provided a solution for the tens of thousands of refugees who wanted to get out of Europe. On the one hand, I will try to follow the open narrative of the Zionist movement, which condemned the pogroms and conveyed empathy for the survivors and the victims, while also tracing the movement’s covert (and lesserknown) policy of turning its back on the refugees and shirking any responsibility for their disastrous fate following the civil war in Russia.