(Jewish Group) This day in history: May 5th: Blame the Jews Day (1881)

[Behind the Aegis]

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

Four years of pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia were set in motion on this date in 1881 by mobs of peasants who attacked Jewish stores and homes in the Ukrainian villages of Konsky-rosdor, Popiko, Andreyevka, and the city Orekhov, after Jews were incorrectly blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya on March 13th. Through the spring and summer the rioting would spread to Odessa and other sites, large and small, and after a brief remission, to Warsaw on Christmas Day and to Balta on Easter, 1882, with increasing ferocity and casualties, including many rapes and deaths. “In Belorussia and Lithuania,” according to Jewish Virtual Library, “where the local authorities adopted a firm attitude against the rioters, large fires broke out in many towns and townlets; a considerable number of these were started by the enemies of the Jews.

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The Pogroms were just starting, and eventually end up with the displacing, raping, and murdering of thousands of Jews in Ukraine, Russia, and the Settlement of the Pale. It also was the start of the Jews fleeing to other parts of Europe, which would prove fatal for many, and more fleeing to the US and Canada.

(Didn't get a single comment in GD, only one recommend, and only 209 reads.)

[beam me up scottie]

1. I kicked and rec'd your GD thread, it's a shame it didn't get more attention.

Sorry I missed it the other day, I need to start checking your journal more often. Your ops are always enlightening.

[MosheFeingold]

2. Little Trivia

But my grandfather moved from what-is-now-Crimea (I think) to the border of Poland/Germany about this time "to be safe." (It kind of worked, for a bit, but that is another story.)

Back in Crimea, his family were tax collectors for the Tsar --- a common profession for Jews, due to high literacy/math rates, but especially chosen by the Tsar as such because they were outsiders and deemed less corrupt than locals.

More subtly, being a tax collector was a ticket to the rare middle class, which the Tsar viewed as a threat to his power, so the Tsar also picked the Jews specifically because they were hated and thus would not have a power base from which to cause trouble with their newfound middle class money.

And also, from the Jewish perspective, being the Tsar's agents brought the defense of the Tsar's army and internal police. Nice things when hated.

Assad did much the same with Christians in Syria, as did Saddam in Iraq -- they were the middle class, but not a threat to power. The Christians become a pet minority for both thugs. And now they are borderline extinct.

Anyway, using a hated minority in this "favored" manner is a common tack of strong men on whom the crown rests uneasily, and is part of the lesson for our people (and others) about the dangers of this arrangement.