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20 Years before the Holocaust, Pogroms in Ukraine Killed 100,000 Jews
(Times of Israel) Rich Tenorio - From 1918 to 1921, more than 1,100 pogroms killed over 100,000 Jews in the area of present-day Ukraine. The story is chronicled in a new book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust, by University of Michigan history and Judaic studies professor Jeffrey Veidlinger. In one incident, the pogrom of Proskuriv on February 14, 1919, listed 911 deaths, which Veidlinger estimates is 1/3 of the actual total. Members of the opposing Red and White sides in the Russian Civil War each participated in the violence, as did many Ukrainian and Polish soldiers and civilians, as well as local warlords. "They often knew each other, particularly [in] small towns, particularly the violence of the warlords in local villages....Local vendettas were a big part of the first pogroms," Veidlinger said.