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JewishHistoryעברית

Proskuriv pogrom

Date
15 February 1919Hebrew date: 15th of Adar I, 5679
Location
Proskuriv (Khmelnytskyi)Ukraine
Then part of
Ukrainian People's Republic
Perpetrators
  • Haidamak regiment under otaman Ivan Semesenko (Military)
Killed (estimate)
1,000 – 1,700[2]Jews killed in a few hours on 15 February 1919. Encyclopaedia Judaica gives 1,700; Heifetz's 1921 relief-committee report, as quoted by the Felshtin Society, gives about 1,500; the Center for Jewish History summary of Tcherikower's files gives more than a thousand, with hundreds more dying of wounds.
Locality

8.8% – 15% of the Jewish population of Proskuriv (Khmelnytskyi)[5]

Worldwide

0.0072% – 0.012% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1917)[19]

Category
Pogrom, Massacre
Confidence
DisputedEncyclopaedia Judaica gives 1,700 killed in Proskuriv on 15 February. Heifetz (1921) gives about 1,500 in three hours. The Center for Jewish History summary says more than a thousand, with hundreds dying later of wounds. The range 1,000–1,700 reflects those accounts.

Summary

On 15 February 1919, after a failed Bolshevik uprising in Proskuriv, otaman Ivan Semesenko ordered troops of the Ukrainian People's Republic to attack the Jewish population, whom he blamed for the revolt. Soldiers went house to house for several hours. Encyclopaedia Judaica records 1,700 Jews killed that day and a further 600 in nearby Felshtin the next day. YIVO treats the massacre as emblematic of the 1919 wave. Semesenko was later removed, tried and executed in 1920 according to the Heifetz report. Symon Petliura, head of the Directory, had sent the brigade to the town but did not issue the killing order; Jews widely held him responsible.

Sources

  1. Henry Abramson, Russian Civil War. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  2. Modern Jewish History; Pogroms. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica)
  3. Alexander Maro, A Holocaust Before The Holocaust; Elias Tsherikover and the Pogroms in Civil War Ukraine. Center for Jewish History (2025)
  4. Bloody Bacchanalia; The Pogroms of Proskurov and Felshtin (quoting Elias Heifetz, 1921). The Felshtin Society
  5. Proskurov. Brockhaus-Efron Jewish Encyclopedia (East Eurotopo translation)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 13,980,715[19]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).
  • Proskuriv (Khmelnytskyi): 11,411[5]Jews in Proskuriv in the 1897 imperial census (11,411 of 22,855 inhabitants), twenty-two years before the February 1919 massacre. The same census counted about 27,000 Jews in Proskuriv county, the uezd rather than the town. No fetched source gives a 1919 town count.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
  8. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
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  19. Игорь Виленский, Оценка сокращения численности еврейского населения Российской Империи и СССР (1897–1926). Еврейская Старина (2024)
  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
  21. Sergio DellaPergola, Demographic Trends in Israel and Palestine: Prospects and Policy Implications. American Jewish Year Book 2003, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2003)
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  31. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Appendix A: Sources and Methodology for Section 2 (Jewish and total population in Germany-Austria and Poland-Lithuania). Authors' appendix PDF (citing Weinryb, Stampfer, Kupovetsky, Guggenheim, Toch, Battenberg, Israel) (2018)
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  52. German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  56. Jewish Populations in the Arab World. Jewish Virtual Library (citing Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2021 / AJYB 2023)
  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  58. Archives juives n°45/2 — Les Juifs d'Algérie. Archives Juives / Les Belles Lettres (2012)
  59. EHRI Country Report — Tunisia. European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
  63. Argentina Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
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