1st Yiddish Edition. Original Publishers Cloth, 8vo, 416 pages. Includes illustrations and map. Includes Spanish Title page: Judios de Kischeneff. Translation of Yehude Kishinov, originally published in Hebrew. Vol III in the series, Besaraber Yidn. Includes bibliographical references (pages 412-416). The name of Kishinev became known to the world at large as a result of two pogroms. The first, initiated and organized by the local and central authorities, took place during Easter on April 67, 1903
.The pogrom was preceded by a poisonous anti-Jewish campaign led by P. Krushevan , director of the Bessarabian newspaper Bessarabets, who incited the population through a constant stream of vicious articles. One of the authors of the most virulent articles was the local police chief, Levendall. In such a heated atmosphere any incident could have dire consequences, and when the body of a Christian child was found, and a young Christian woman patient committed suicide in the Jewish hospital, the mob became violent. A blood libel , circulated by the Bessarabets, spread like wildfire. (It was later proved that the child was murdered by his relatives and that the suicide of the young woman was in no way connected with the Jews.) According to official statistics, 49 Jews lost their lives and more than 500 were injured, some of them seriously; 700 houses were looted and destroyed and 600 businesses and shops were looted. The material loss amounted to 2,500,000 gold rubles, and about 2,000 families were left homeless. Both Russians and Romanians joined in the riots. Russians were sent in from other towns and the students of the theological seminaries and the secondary schools and colleges played a leading role. The garrison of 5,000 soldiers stationed in the city, which could easily have held back the mob, took no action. Public outcry throughout the world was aroused by the incident and protest meetings were organized in London, Paris, and New York. A letter of protest written in the United States was handed over to President Theodore Roosevelt to be delivered to the czar, who refused to accept it. Under the pressure of public opinion, some of the perpetrators of the pogrom were brought to justice but they received very lenient sentences. L.N. Tolstoy expressed his sympathy for the victims, condemning the czarist authorities as responsible for the pogrom. The Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko described the pogrom in his story House No. 13 as did ?.N. Bialik in his poem Be-Ir ha-Haregah (In the Town of Death).On Oct. 1920, 1905, riots broke out once more. They began as a protest demonstration by the patriots against the czar's declaration of Aug. 19, 1905, and deteriorated into an attack on the Jewish quarter in which 19 Jews were killed, 56 were injured, and houses and shops were looted and destroyed: damages amounted to 300,000 rubles. On this occasion, some of the Jewish youth organized itself into self-defense units . The two pogroms had a profound effect on the Jews of Kishinev. Between 1902 and 1905 their numbers dropped from around 60,000 to 53,243, many immigrating to the United States and the Americas, while many more left after the second attack. The economic development of the town was brought to a standstill
.On July 17, 1941, Kishinev was occupied by German and Romanian units, who entered it together with units of Einsatzgruppe D. The massacre of Kishinev's Jews began immediately under the auspices of the Einsatzgruppe, and by the time the concentration of Jews into a ghetto was completed, about 10,000 had been slaughtered. ....On Oct. 4, 1941, deportations began to Transnistria , the first group containing 1,600 persons. After this, between 700 and 1,000 Jews were deported daily, the last group leaving on October 31. ...In Transnistria Jews were sent to various camps and ghettos, where two-thirds of them died from epidemics, hunger, and exposure. The exact number of dead is not known, but taking into account the proportion of those killed in Bessarabia from the time of the Romanian and German conquest until the deportations to Transnistria on the one hand, and the number of those who died in Transnistria on the other, it may be estimated that of the 65,000 Jewish inhabitants in Kishinev in 1941, 53,000 perished (JewishVirtualLibrary). SUBJECT(S): Jews -- Moldova -- Chisinau -- History. Joden. Ethnic relations. Kisjinev. Moldova -- Chisinau. OCLC: 11355859. Institutional bookplate and edgestamps, otherwise clean, spine lightly sunned, about Very Good Condition (YIZ-20-38)
