1941 pogroms in eastern Poland

Anti-Jewish massacres in eastern Poland in 1941 Immediately following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in at least 219 localities in the territories that had been part of Poland prior to 1939 and were occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941.The Onset of Mass Murder. The Fate of Jewish Families in 1941 https://wwv.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/jewish-families-1941/index.asp 2026-04-04 wwv.yadvashem.org en2016-01-25 Chronology of Mass Violence in Poland 1918-1948 Sciences Po Mass Violence and Resistance - Research Network https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/chronology-mass-violence-poland-1918-1948.html 2026-04-04 www.sciencespo.fr en This included murders, beatings, robberies and other manifestations of anti-Jewish violence by the local population and were encouraged by the Germans and especially the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen had received orders from Security Police Chief Reinhard Heydrich to tolerate and even encourage the locals to launch pogroms.Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Summer 1941 Virtual Shtetl https://sztetl.org.pl/en/tradition-and-jewish-culture/history-of-the-jews-in-poland/anti-jewish-pogroms-in-summer-1941 2025-12-28 sztetl.org.plPoland 1941 https://ackerman.utdallas.edu/study/poland-1941/ 2025-12-28 Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies en Background According to political scientists Jeffrey Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, the presence of a political threat is the strongest explanatory factor for why pogroms occurred in some locations but not others: "Pogroms were most likely to occur where there were lots of Jews, where those Jews advocated national equality with non-Jews, and where parties advocating national equality were popular."Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 3 Pogroms Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” The term usually refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries.Pogroms Holocaust Encyclopedia https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms https://web.archive.org/web/20251110072110/https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms 2025-11-10 2025-12-28 Holocaust Encyclopedia en live Anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in at least 219 localities in the eastern borderlands of Poland, i.e. lands that had been part of Poland prior to 1939 and were occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941.Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 2 Among these pogroms were the Jedwabne pogrom,Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 8 Lviv pogroms (1941),Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 91 Szczuczyn pogrom,Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 72 and Wąsosz pogrom.Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 142 Kopstein and Wittenberg estimate around twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand "deaths resulting from neighbor-on-neighbor violence in summer 1941", significantly less than the 1918–1920 pogroms in Poland.Kopstein Wittenberg 2018 121 List of pogroms Easter Pogrom, by local Poles on 22 and 33 March 1940. Radziłów pogrom by local Poles on 7 July 1941. Jedwabne pogrom in Jedwabne, carried out by its Polish inhabitants on 10 July 1941. Lviv pogroms in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by German security forces, Ukrainian nationalists, and the local majority Polish population. from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941. Szczuczyn pogrom in Szczuczyn, carried out by its Polish inhabitants in June 1941. It was stopped by passing German soldiers. Tykocin pogrom in Tykocin, perpetrated by personnel of Einsatzgruppe B on August 25, 1941. Wąsosz pogrom in Wąsosz, carried out by Poles on 5 July 1941. References Sources Kopstein Jeffrey S. Wittenberg Jason Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust 2018 Cornell University Press 978-1-5017-1527-3 en Further reading Lower Wendy Wendy Lower Pogroms, mob violence and genocide in western Ukraine, summer 1941: varied histories, explanations and comparisons Journal of Genocide Research 2011 13 3 217–246 10.1080/14623528.2011.606683 143549036 Tryczyk Mirosław The Towns of Death: Pogroms Against Jews by Their Neighbors 2021 Rowman & Littlefield 978-1-7936-3764-2 en Dobroszycki Lucjan Gurock Jeffrey S. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the Ussr, 1941-1945 1993 M.E. Sharpe 978-1-56324-173-4 en Zbikowski Andrzej Local Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Occupied Territories of Eastern Poland, June—July 1941 Persak, Krzysztof. "Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Summer 1941" on Virtual Shtetl [Accessed: 8.08.2023] Grądzka-Rejak, Martyna. "Extermination of Jews in the Eastern Borderlands" on Polish Righteous [Accessed: 8.08.2023] Category:1941 murders in Poland Category:Holocaust massacres and pogroms in Poland Category:Local participation in the Holocaust Category:June 1941 in Europe Category:Polish war crimes in World War II