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JewishHistoryעברית

Khmelnytsky massacres (Gzeyres Takh Vetat)

Date
1648 – 1649
Location
Ukrainian lands of the Polish–Lithuanian CommonwealthUkraine
Then part of
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Perpetrators
  • Cossack and peasant forces under Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Military)
  • Crimean Tatar allies of the Cossacks (Military)
Killed (estimate)
18,000 – 20,000[2]Stampfer's demographic estimate of Jewish deaths in the affected Ukrainian lands (excluding Red Rus'), including killing, disease, hunger and the hardships of flight; not all were killed by Ukrainian forces.
Locality

35% – 50% of the Jewish population of Ukrainian lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth[2]

Country

9.7% – 12% of the Jewish population of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (c. 1648)[34]

Worldwide

1.8% – 2% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1650)[5]

Category
Massacre, Pogrom
Confidence
DisputedSeventeenth-century chronicles and later popular accounts give casualty figures far above the Jewish population of the region. Stampfer's reconstruction, based on pre- and post-uprising demography, puts deaths at no more than 18,000–20,000 of about 40,000, and notes that many of those deaths were from disease, hunger and flight rather than direct killing.

Summary

In 1648–1649 Cossack and peasant forces led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky rose against Polish rule in the Ukrainian lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Jews, who often served Polish nobles as leaseholders and tax collectors, were treated as part of the enemy camp. When towns and fortresses fell, Jews were killed together with Polish nobles and Catholic clergy; many other Jewish deaths were caused by Crimean Tatar allies, by conversion under threat, captivity and sale into Ottoman slavery, or by hunger and disease in flight. Among the communities destroyed in the first stage were Nemyriv (10 June 1648), Tulchyn and Bar. Stampfer estimates that of about 40,000 Jews in the affected regions, no more than 18,000–20,000 died. Contemporary chronicles, especially Nathan Hannover's Yeven metsulah, described far higher figures; later scholarship treats those numbers as exaggerated. A fast on the 20th of Sivan was enacted in memory of the victims.

Sub-events

  1. Nemyriv massacre

    10 June 1648 · Nemyriv

Sources

  1. Shaul Stampfer, Gzeyres Takh Vetat. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  2. Shaul Stampfer, What Actually Happened to the Jews of Ukraine in 1648?. Jewish History 17.2 (2003)
  3. John Klier, Pogroms. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 1,000,000[5]c. 1650DellaPergola places world Jewry at around or fewer than one million in the second half of the seventeenth century, after the 1648–1660 violence in Eastern Europe and the Thirty Years' War. The entry uses one million as the stated round figure; he does not publish a separate lower bound.
  • Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: 170,000 – 185,000[34]c. 1648Botticini–Eckstein (after Kupovetsky / Weinryb / Ettinger) put Commonwealth Jewry at about 185,000 on the eve of the mid-century wars, of which Weinryb's Poland-proper figure is about 170,000 excluding Lithuania. Stampfer separately estimates only ~40,000 in the Ukrainian lands before 1648—not a Commonwealth total. DellaPergola's 250,000–350,000 around 1650 is for Eastern Europe more broadly (Weinryb), not the Commonwealth alone.
  • Ukrainian lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: 40,000 – 51,325[2]Jews in the Ukrainian lands affected in 1648, excluding Red Rus', at the beginning of that year. Stampfer's estimate is about 40,000 (Volhynia 16,000, Podilia 9,000, Bratslav 9,000 and Kiev 5,000). He records Ettinger's estimate for the same region as 51,325. This is not the Jewish population of the whole Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Sources for population estimates

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