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JewishHistoryעברית

Lviv pogrom of November 1918

Date
22 November 1918 – 24 November 1918Hebrew date: 18th of Kislev, 5679 – 20th of Kislev, 5679
Location
Lviv (Lwów, Lemberg)Ukraine
Then part of
Lviv under Polish military control after Austria-Hungary
Perpetrators
  • Polish soldiers and civilians (Military)
  • Civilian rioters and looters (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
73 – 100[3]The Jewish Rescue Committee in Lviv recorded 73 dead and 443 wounded. YIVO's Lviv article says almost 100 Jews lost their lives; a YIVO photograph caption states that Polish troops killed 73 Jews.
Locality

0.13% – 0.17% of the Jewish population of Lviv (Lwów, Lemberg)[4]

Worldwide

0.00052% – 0.00072% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1917)[18]

Category
Pogrom
Confidence
DisputedThe Jewish Rescue Committee's count of 73 dead is the figure used in most historical literature and in a YIVO caption. YIVO's running text says almost 100. Other contemporary estimates, summarized by Wierzbieniec and by later Polish studies, range from lower official counts to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs report of at least 150; those higher and lower figures were not independently verified in the pages fetched here beyond Wierzbieniec's discussion of the committee's own 73.

Summary

After Polish forces took Lviv from Ukrainian troops on the night of 21–22 November 1918, pogroms were carried out in Jewish neighbourhoods. Jews were accused of having backed the Ukrainian side, though the community had declared neutrality in the Polish–Ukrainian fighting. YIVO records that almost 100 Jews lost their lives and that Polish troops killed 73 Jews suspected of collaborating with Ukrainian forces. The Jewish Rescue Committee, established on 29 November, counted 73 dead, 443 wounded, 13,375 people affected and material damage of about 103 million Austrian crowns. YIVO lists the Lviv attack of 22–24 November among the most notorious pogroms of the Polish–Ukrainian and Polish–Soviet fighting.

Sources

  1. John Klier, Pogroms. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  2. Rachel Manekin, L’viv. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  3. Wacław Wierzbieniec, The Consequences of the Lviv Pogrom on November 22–23, 1918, in Light of the Findings and Actions of the Jewish Rescue Committee. Studia Judaica (2020)
  4. Józef Piłatowicz, Jewish Students at the Lviv Polytechnic until 1939. Historia i Świat (2020)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 13,980,715[18]c. 1917American Jewish Year Book 1917–18 revised world total of 13,980,715 (Europe 9,986,447; America 3,094,309; Asia 499,679; Africa 380,865; Australia 19,415).
  • Lviv (Lwów, Lemberg): 57,387[4]Jews in Lviv in the 1910 Austrian census (57,387, 27.84 percent), eight years before the November 1918 pogrom. YIVO gives 44,258 in 1900 and records that some 16,000 Jews fled when the Russian army took the city in the summer of 1914. No fetched source gives a count for November 1918.

Sources for population estimates

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