Analysis Of Engel's Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking The Pogrom

Many terms have been analyzed, and reanalyzed to universally establish a common definition. However, many of those definitions haven’t been fully accepted in different areas of the world. There is words like genocide, and mass murders, that have different denotations and explanations and can thus, cause implications in terms of consequences. In particular, the word pogrom has had different interpretations since it was first used in the 19th century. In Engel’s article Anti- Jewish violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, he delineates the importance of interpretation in terms of explaining the word pogrom. First and foremost, in order to explain what Engel writes in his article, we have to understand a vague definition of

To people like, Polish historian Franciszek Bujak, the term pogrom can only apply to Jews and no one else. He says that there is certain criteria that would make a pogrom a pogrom. Those criteria are as follows: “the violence couldn’t be against the Jews in a socio economic or political way, it couldn’t occur with any other disturbance, it had to be motivated entirely by groundless unprovoked religious or ethnic hatred, the victims had to be entirely defenseless, and lastly, casualties needed to run into at least the thousands” (Engel 24). With Bujak’s definition, no violences would be categorized as pogroms. It is mostly like he is trying to downplay the extremity of the violences by saying none of it is really that severe. Using Bujak’s definition would mean that the violences in Lwow, Czestochowa, Lida, and Wilno would not be considered pogroms—although it is described as such by many historians. The term pogrom has a negative connotation to it, therefore Bujak wouldn’t want Poland to be perceived as violent or irrational (by stating that they committed pogroms). This is where biases make it impossible to agree upon a common definition to words like pogrom. Not only do biases cause disruptions in the definition of pogrom, but also categorizing all violences under the same

He gives several examples on page 22 that described violent acts against the Jews, but aren’t necessarily similar to fall under the same category. A few of those examples are: the riot in Warsaw in 1881, where street mobs took revenge on Jews for allegedly disrupting midnight mass (there was no killings, just damage to property), the confrontation between striking factory workers and local Jews in 1892 (where 3 Jews died but 140 Polish workers were shot too), or the White Terror in 1919 (where 3,000 Jews were killed). Engel is perplexed by the broad use of pogrom because all three instances have been described as pogroms, but their severity is completely different. It’s almost as if we’re saying that no deaths is the same as 3,000 deaths; this is a very difficult comparison to make. One of the solutions Engel offers to such a complication, is that violences could be separated into sub categories not just one broad label. The categories should describe “property damage, killing of lives, the role of state authorities, the immediate historical background and context of the violence” which will lead to a more specific, and accurate label (Engel,