Pogrom
Pogrom
Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881)), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev pogrom (1905)), and Białystok pogrom (1906). After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, several pogroms occurred amidst the power struggles in Eastern Europe, including the Lwów pogrom (1918)) and Kiev pogroms (1919)). The most significant pogrom which occurred in Nazi Germany was the 1938 Kristallnacht. At least 91 Jews were killed, a further thirty thousand arrested and subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps, a thousand synagogues burned, and over seven thousand Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iași pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – as well as the Jedwabne pogrom in German-occupied Poland). Post-World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom, the 1947 Aleppo pogrom, and the 1955 Istanbul pogrom.
Pogrom
This type of violence has also occurred to other ethnic and religious minorities. Examples include the 1984 Sikh massacre in which 3,000 Sikhs were killed and the 2002 Gujarat pogrom against Indian Muslims.
Etymology
First recorded in English in 1882, the Russian word pogróm (погро́м, pronounced [pɐˈɡrom]) is derived from the common prefix po- (по-) and the verb gromít' (громи́ть, [ɡrɐˈmʲitʲ]) meaning 'to destroy, wreak havoc, demolish violently'. The noun pogrom, which has a relatively short history, is used in English and many other languages as a loanword, possibly borrowed from Yiddish (where the word takes the form פאָגראָם). Its modern widespread circulation began with the antisemitic violence in the Russian Empire in 1881–1883.
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