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JewishHistoryעברית

Tashkent blood libel

Date
9 May 1962Hebrew date: 5th of Iyyar, 5722
Location
TashkentUzbekistan
Then part of
Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic
Perpetrators
  • Local rioters in Tashkent (Mob)
Killed (estimate)
No reliable estimate
Category
Blood libel, Pogrom
Confidence
DisputedB'nai B'rith, as reported by JTA, describes a Passover blood rumour and rioting. The Soviet clergy statement quoted in the same JTA dispatch reduces the episode to a drunken fight and denies religious motive. Encyclopaedia Judaica confirms a 1962 Tashkent blood libel but does not describe the scale of violence. No fetched page gives a casualty figure.

Summary

On 9 May 1962 Jews in Tashkent were attacked after a rumour that a Jewish shopkeeper had taken blood from a Muslim girl for a Passover ritual. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, reporting B'nai B'rith, names the accused as Abigai Bangieva, a 70-year-old woman, and describes wild rioting against Tashkent Jews. Encyclopaedia Judaica records a blood libel in Tashkent in 1962 similar to the Margilan case of the previous year. A joint Jewish-Muslim clergy statement circulated by Novosti, quoted by JTA, said that on 9 May a fight had broken out between an Uzbek and three Bukharan Jewish neighbours and denied religious strife.

Sources

  1. Soviet Statement Vague in Denying Pogroms in Uzbekistan Cities. Jewish Telegraphic Agency (1963)
  2. Bukhara. Encyclopaedia Judaica / Jewish Virtual Library

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 12,079,000[3]c. 1960DellaPergola's revised core estimate for 1 January 1960 in the 2024 Year Book chapter.
  • Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic: 94,344[67]c. 19591959 All-Union census for the Uzbek SSR (Demoscope): 94,344 Jews (of whom 72,818 "Jews", 21,335 Central Asian Jews, plus small Mountain/Georgian/Krymchak counts). JVL Uzbekistan reproduces 94,344 and notes 50,445 in Tashkent. Nearest opened republic total for the 1961–62 blood-libel events.

Sources for population estimates

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