Historical Context

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Ukraine 1900 - 1921

At the start of 20th century, anti-Jewish pogroms continued to occur in cities and towns across the Russian Empire such as Kishinev, Kiev, Odessa, and many others. Numerous Jewish self-defense groups were organized to prevent the outbreak of pogroms among which the most notorious one was under the leadership of Mishka Yaponchik in Odessa.

In 1905, a series of pogroms erupted at the same time as the Revolution against the government of Nicholas II. The chief organizers of the pogroms were the members of the Union of the Russian People (commonly known as the "Black Hundreds").

From 1911 to 1913, the antisemitic tenor of the period was characterized by a number of blood libel cases (accusations of Jews murdering Christians for ritual purposes). One of the most famous was the two-year trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis, who was charged with the murder of a Christian boy (Lowe 1993, 284–90). The trial was showcased by the authorities to illustrate the perfidy of the Jewish population.

From March to May 1915, in the face of the German army, the government expelled thousands of Jews from the Empire's border areas, which coincide with the Pale of Settlement.

 

During the 1917 Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 70,000 to 250,000 Jewish civilians were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire in this period. In the territories of modern Ukraine an estimated 31,071 were killed during the period 1918–1920

 

Ukrainian People's Republic

During the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1921), pogroms continued to be perpetrated on Ukrainian territory. In the Ukrainian People's Republic, Yiddish was an official language. All Government posts and institutions had Jewish members.  A Ministry for Jewish Affairs was established (it was the first modern state to do so.  All rights of Jewish culture were guaranteed.  All Jewish parties abstained or voted against the Tsentralna Rada's Fourth Universal of 25 January 1918 which was aimed at breaking ties with Bolshevik Russia and proclaiming a sovereign Ukrainian state, since all Jewish parties were strongly against Ukrainian independence.

Only in Ukraine, the number of civilian Jews killed during the period was estimated to be between 35 and 50 thousand. Archives declassified after 1991 provide evidence of a higher number; in the period from 1918 to 1921, "according to incomplete data, at least 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine in the pogroms.”  The Ukrainian People's Republic did issue orders condemning pogroms and attempted to investigate them.[18] But it lacked authority to stop violence.  In the last months of its existence it lacked any power of creating social stability.

Among prominent Ukrainian statesmen of this period were Moisei Rafes, Pinkhas Krasny, Abram Revutsky, Moishe Zilberfarb, and many others. (see General Secretariat of Ukraine) The autonomy of Ukraine was openly greeted by the Ukrainian Jewish Volodymyr Zhabotinsky.

Between April and December 1918 the Ukrainian People's Republic was non-existent and overthrown by the Ukrainian State of Pavlo Skoropadsky  who ended the experiment in Jewish autonomy. 

 

 

Vienna 1920’s

After the outbreak of World War I and the first Austrian defeats on the eastern front, an exodus of 350,000 refugees began in the eastern regions of the empire formally Galicia. Amongst the refugees were some 50,000 (according to the police) to 70,000 (according to the Arbeiterzeitung newspaper) Jews, who all arrived at Vienna's northern railway station in Leopoldstadt.

Although around half of these new arrivals returned to their homes once the situation had calmed down on the eastern front, the entire Jewish community in Vienna and its relations with Vienna's Christian population were put to the test by these events. 

 

The refugees were poverty-stricken, but work was hard to come by and factories were unwilling to employ the refugees. The situation has been described thus: “While the Germans were condemning the Jews in the east to forced labour, the Austrians were condemning them to forced unemployment”.Many of the refugees tried to earn their daily bread as peddlers or salesmen, and many charity organisations sprung up to coordinate clothes donations and other campaigns, but the “Ostjuden” (Eastern Jews) were the victims of many negative prejudices and because of their poverty were more frequently the targets of antisemitic attacks than wealthy assimilated Jews. It was not made easy for them to establish themselves in Vienna.

 

With the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy, Jews could move freely throughout Austria-Hungary. The community in Vienna grew again; it remained approximately the same size until the start of the persecution of Jews in the 1930s. At this time, Vienna's Jews were divided into two groups. On the one hand, there were the Jews who had either lived for a long time in Vienna or who had been born there and who assimilated into Christian society. On the other hand, there were Orthodox Jews, who wished to live in line with traditional beliefs and practices. The community's voting habits also reveals a division; while the majority, made up for the most part of assimilated Jews, voted for the social democrats, others voted for Jewish parties, which disputed elections both in the empire and in the First Republic and which concentrated their campaign advertising on fighting the social democrats for votes. Over time, almost all Jews came to vote for the social democrats, because the Jewish parties were seen as not strong enough, while all other parties were antisemitic and refused to accept Jewish members.

 

Antisemitism became ever more pronounced during this period. In Jewish quarters, in particular in Leopoldstadt, antisemitic organisations distributed their flyers and newspapers aimed at turning the Christian population against their Jewish neighbours. A protest at the Praterstern organised by socialists and communists against such provocation ended in violence. When the German-nationalist Josef Mohapl was stabbed to death by an apolitical attacker who already had a criminal record, right-wing newspapers dubbed this the “Christian pogrom in Leopoldstadt”, and from this moment onwards, Nazi hooligans were to be seen in Leopoldstadt. One of the first attacks on prominent establishments that these groups instigated was the destruction of the well-known “Café Produktenbörse” in December 1929. The attack on a prayer room in the Café Sperlhof in 1932 was particularly violent; praying Jews were beaten and the attackers laid waste to the building.

Many Jews joined socialist and/or Zionist (youth) organisations, the largest of which were Hashomer Hatzair, Poale Zion and the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Youth. In the 1930s, some socialist, Jewish and Zionist movements united in committees for action, to organise street patrols and to take action against “Hakenkreuzler” (thugs bearing the swastika), who were attacking Jews. The first such group was the “Jüdische Selbstwehr” (Jewish Self-Defence). The paramilitary organisation Betar also had members in Vienna.

After a century of progress towards Jewish emancipation, antisemitic attacks encouraged by the Christian Social Party, the Greater German People's Party and the Nazis became more common between the two World Wars. Hugo Bettauer was amongst those who recognised the signs of the time. The film “The City Without Jews” is based on his novel with the same title.