Eyewitness Account~ Anti Jewish Pogroms in Russia

Pogroms began after Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815.

Assassination of Tsar Alexander II

Victim of Pogrom, 1906

The event which triggered the pogroms was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II for which some blamed "agents of foreign influence", implying that the Jews committed it. One of the conspirators was of Jewish origins, and the importance of her role in the assassination was greatly exaggerated.

The Pale of Settlement:  Originally formed in 1791 by Russia's Catherine II, the Pale of Settlement was a region designated for Jews. Very few Jews were allowed to live elsewhere. The area mostly falls within today's Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Moldova.

Crowded into this small area of Russia, the Jews struggled to find jobs and pay rising rent prices. The word pogrom literally means "riot" in Russian. There were numerous pogroms.  During these pogroms, entire Jewish cities were ransacked and destroyed while hundreds of Jews were brutally murdered.

To escape such persecution, Jews sought to immigrate to America.   Jews were repeatedly charged double or triple the cost of passports and boat tickets to America.  In every direction obstacles needed to be overcome.

Eyewitness Account of a Pogrom:

In 1906, the U.S. Government sent immigration inspector Philip Cowen on an undercover mission to the Pale of Settlement in Russia (St. Petersburg, Kiev, and Odessa) to discover the cause of increased Jewish immigration from Russia to the United States. The following are personal accounts included in inspector Cowen’s report:

Chana Lewin, 27 Penknia Street.  “As my sister Sura and a daughter of the landlady hid themselves from the rifle shots, a shot came from Ogrodevvi Street and one shot killed my sister and Miss Feigenbaum.

Half an hour later there came soldiers with an officer of dragoons in order to search the house. I told them the misfortune that had happened and received for answer ‘We shot because shots were fired out of this house’. As with tears in my eyes I assured them that there was no one in the house that could shoot, and bade them to save us (I lived with my mother and have small children), he shouted at me ‘And you too will be killed in two hours. We will shoot off your head’.

Then we were examined and searched and they took fifty roubles of money, tore the earrings out of my ear. On my begging for a few kopeks for bread the soldier impatiently shouted at me ‘Silence or I'll kill you’."

Account of Moschka Pi. Srebrnik, 49 Penknia St

Moschka Pi. Srebrnik is a watchmaker, has a store. 

“On Sept. 8th at 8 o'clock at night, as I wished to close my store three dragoons came and called in to me  ‘Why do you close your business? Today it is permitted to deal to ten o'clock.’ Before this all business had to be closed at 7 o'clock and if anyone failed to do this the dragoons compelled him to.

Believing them, I left my store open. About half-past 8 o'clock, as I stood at the door of my shop I heard two revolver shots, and immediately thereafter, in fact accompanying them, shooting began over the whole city. You could hear the salvos of rifles, and also individual shots. I hurried to close my store, extinguished the fire and hid myself with the children and my mother and my neighbor Grinspan and his wife in our cellar.

My sotre (store) had already been plundered of a few hundred roubles worth of goods at the riot following the murder of Police Captain Holzew. My neighbor was also robbed of 500 roubles at that time.  We sat in the cellar and listened. After a few minutes my store was broken open and I could plainly hear the battering of heavy things against the store, and the robbery began. Then Grinspan and I went upstairs, opened the door that led from the kitchen to the store, lit the lamp and said ‘We are the owners; what do you want in our store?’ A side of my store, my accommodations consisted of one room and kitchen, which was entered through the store. These rooms were crowded by more than fifty soldiers.

Among them was a sergeant. The soldiers were of the Libau regiment. We were searched, taken to the street and the plundering continued. In the street I turned towards Tichanowsky and bade him to protect me. "Were they searched?" he asked of the sergeant. "Searched, but nothing found" he replied. I was then let go and we went again to Tichanowsky with the inquiry why we were arrested and why we were robbed.

For answer the Chief of City protection Tichanowsky struck Grinspan with a loaded whip upon the back several times, and me three or four times upon the head, and directed the police to punish us further and to take us to prison. On the way there the dragoons tortured us still further, hitting me with their muskets on the left side, that is the soldiers did while the dragoons struck me on the head with the hilts of their sabers. My eyes were blackened and my head covered with wounds.

From the police station we were again taken to Tichanowsky. We declined to go there, but went because we were in fear of death, as the soldiers forced us to go. We were again abused. I don't know how I ever retained my life. Then we were taken again to the police, where we were again struck with the rifles and saber hilts. One officer present apparently could not stand this sort of thing and went out. It was only because there was a policeman there whom I happened to know by name, Nowitzkj, that our live was saved…, we begged him to arrest us so as to free us from our agony. We were arrested for three hours and after that taken to the hospital.”

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This book contains many accounts of Jewish migration;  immigrants from Russia, the Eastern Europeans in New York and Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis.

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