Pogrom

For the racehorse, see Pogrom (horse). For the volcano in the Aleutian Islands, see Pogromni Volcano.

Pogrom
Plundering the Judengasse in a Jewish ghetto during the Fettmilch uprising. Frankfurt, 22 August 1614
Target	Predominantly Jews Additionally other ethnic groups

A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement). Retrospectively, similar attacks against Jews which occurred in other times and places also became known as pogroms. Sometimes the word is used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incident, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.

Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906). After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, several pogroms occurred amidst the power struggles in Eastern Europe, including the Lwów pogrom (1918) and Kiev pogroms (1919). The most significant pogrom which occurred in Nazi Germany was the 1938 Kristallnacht. At least 91 Jews were killed, a further thirty thousand arrested and subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps, a thousand synagogues burned, and over seven thousand Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iași pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – as well as the Jedwabne pogrom in German-occupied Poland. Post-World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom, the 1947 Aleppo pogrom, and the 1955 Istanbul pogrom.

This type of violence has also occurred to other ethnic and religious minorities. Examples include the 1984 Sikh massacre in which 3,000 Sikhs were killed and the 2002 Gujarat pogrom against Indian Muslims.

In 2008, two attacks in the Occupied West Bank by Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs were labeled as pogroms by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Huwara pogrom was a common name for the 2023 Israeli settler attack on the Palestinian town of Huwara in February 2023. In 2023, a Wall Street Journal editorial referred to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel as a pogrom.

The word pogrom

An early reference to a "pogrom" in The Times of London, December 1903. Together with The New York Times and the Hearst press, they took the lead in highlighting the pogrom in Kishinev (now Chişinău, Moldova) and other cities in Russia. In May of the same year, The Times' Russian correspondent Dudley Disraeli Braham had been expelled from Russia.

Main article: Definitions of pogrom

Etymology

First recorded in English in 1882, the Russian word pogróm (погро́м, pronounced [pɐˈɡrom]) is derived from the common prefix po- (по-) and the verb gromít' (громи́ть, [ɡrɐˈmʲitʲ]) meaning 'to destroy, wreak havoc, demolish violently'. The noun pogrom, which has a relatively short history, is used in English and many other languages as a loanword, possibly borrowed from Yiddish (where the word takes the form פאָגראָם). Its modern widespread circulation began with the antisemitic violence in the Russian Empire in 1881–1883.

Usage of the word

The 1921 Tulsa race massacre, which destroyed the wealthiest black community in the United States, has been described as a pogrom.

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "the term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [and] the first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881". The Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789 states that pogroms "were antisemitic disturbances that periodically occurred within the tsarist empire." However, the term is widely used to refer to many events which occurred prior to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. Historian of Russian Jewry John Klier writes in Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882: "By the twentieth century, the word 'pogrom' had become a generic term in English for all forms of collective violence directed against Jews." Abramson points out that "in mainstream usage the word has come to imply an act of antisemitism", since while "Jews have not been the only group to suffer under this phenomenon ... historically Jews have been frequent victims of such violence."

The term is also used in reference to attacks on non-Jewish ethnic minorities, and accordingly, some scholars do not include antisemitism as the defining characteristic of pogroms. Reviewing the word's uses in scholarly literature, historian Werner Bergmann proposes that a pogrom should be "defined as a unilateral, nongovernmental form of collective violence that is initiated by the majority population against a largely defenseless minority ethnic group, and occurring when the majority expect the state to provide them [sic] with no assistance in overcoming a (perceived) threat from the minority". However, Bergmann adds that in Western usage, the word's "anti-Semitic overtones" have been retained. Historian David Engel supports this view, writing that while "there can be no logically or empirically compelling grounds for declaring that some particular episode does or does not merit the label [pogrom]," the majority of the incidents which are "habitually" described as pogroms took place in societies that were significantly divided by ethnicity or religion where the violence was committed by members of the higher-ranking group against members of a stereotyped lower-ranking group with which they expressed some complaint, and where the members of the higher-ranking group justified their acts of violence by claiming that the law of the land would not be used to prevent the alleged complaint.

There is no universally accepted set of characteristics which define the term pogrom. Klier writes that "when applied indiscriminately to events in Eastern Europe, the term can be misleading, the more so when it implies that 'pogroms' were regular events in the region and that they always shared common features." Use of the term pogrom to refer to events in 1918–19 in Polish cities (including the Kielce pogrom, the Pinsk massacre and the Lwów pogrom) was specifically avoided in the 1919 Morgenthau Report; the word "excesses" was employed instead because the authors argued that the use of the term "pogrom" required a situation to be antisemitic rather than political in nature, which meant that it was inapplicable to the conditions which exist in a war zone. Media use of the term pogrom to refer to the 1991 Crown Heights riot caused public controversy. In 2008, two separate attacks in the West Bank by Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs were characterized as pogroms by then Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert.

Werner Bergmann suggests that all such incidents have a particularly unifying characteristic: "By the collective attribution of a threat, the pogrom differs from other forms of violence, such as lynchings, which are directed at individual members of a minority group, while the imbalance of power in favor of the rioters distinguishes pogroms from other forms of riots (food riots, race riots or 'communal riots' between evenly matched groups); and again, the low level of organization separates them from vigilantism, terrorism, massacre and genocide".

History of anti-Jewish pogroms

The Hep-Hep riots in Würzburg, 1819. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jewish man with a pitchfork and a broom. On the right, a man wearing spectacles, tails and a six-button waistcoat, "perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher," holds a Jewish man by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. The houses are being looted. A contemporary engraving by Johann Michael Voltz.

The first recorded anti-Jewish riots took place in Alexandria in the year 38 CE, followed by the more known riot of 66 CE. Other notable events took place in Europe during the Middle Ages. Jewish communities were targeted in 1189 and 1190 in England and throughout Europe during the Crusades and the Black Death of 1348–1350, including in Toulon, Erfurt, Basel, Aragon, Flanders and Strasbourg. Some 510 Jewish communities were destroyed during this period, extending further to the Brussels massacre of 1370. On Holy Saturday of 1389, a pogrom began in Prague that led to the burning of the Jewish quarter, the killing of many Jews, and the suicide of many Jews trapped in the main synagogue; the number of dead was estimated at 400–500 men, women and children. Attacks against Jews also took place in Barcelona and other Spanish cities during the massacre of 1391.

The brutal murders of Jews and Poles occurred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657 in present-day Ukraine. Modern historians give estimates of the scale of the murders by Khmelnytsky's Cossacks ranging between 40,000 and 100,000 men, women and children, or perhaps many more.

The outbreak of violence against Jews (Hep-Hep riots) occurred at the beginning of the 19th century in reaction to Jewish emancipation in the German Confederation.

Pogroms in the Russian Empire

Victims of a pogrom in Kishinev, Bessarabia, 1903

Further information: Pogroms in the Russian Empire

The Russian Empire, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories in the Russian Partition that contained large Jewish populations, during the military partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795. In conquered territories, a new political entity called the Pale of Settlement was formed in 1791 by Catherine the Great. Most Jews from the former Commonwealth were allowed to reside only within the Pale, including families expelled by royal decree from St. Petersburg, Moscow and other large Russian cities. The 1821 Odessa pogroms marked the beginning of the 19th century pogroms in Tsarist Russia; there were four more such pogroms in Odessa before the end of the century. Following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 by Narodnaya Volya, anti-Jewish events turned into a wave of over 200 pogroms by their modern definition, which lasted for several years. Jewish self-governing Kehillah were abolished by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844.

There is some disagreement about the level of planning from the Tsarist authorities and the motives for the attacks.

The first in 20th-century Russia was the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 in which 49 Jews were killed, hundreds wounded, 700 homes destroyed and 600 businesses pillaged. In the same year, pogroms took place in Gomel (Belarus), Smela, Feodosiya and Melitopol (Ukraine). Extreme savagery was typified by mutilations of the wounded. They were followed by the Zhitomir pogrom (with 29 killed), and the Kiev pogrom of October 1905 resulting in a massacre of approximately 100 Jews. In three years between 1903 and 1906, about 660 pogroms were recorded in Ukraine and Bessarabia; half a dozen more in Belorussia, carried out with the Russian government's complicity, but no anti-Jewish pogroms were recorded in Poland. At about that time, the Jewish Labor Bund began organizing armed self-defense units ready to shoot back, and the pogroms subsided for a number of years. According to professor Colin Tatz, between 1881 and 1920 there were 1,326 pogroms in Ukraine (see: Southwestern Krai parts of the Pale) which took the lives of 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews, leaving half a million homeless. This violence across Eastern Europe prompted a wave of Jewish migration westward that totaled about 2.5 million people.

Eastern Europe after World War I

Map of pogroms in Ukraine between 1918 and 1920 per casualties

Further information: Pogroms of the Russian Civil War

Large-scale pogroms, which began in the Russian Empire several decades earlier, intensified during the period of the Russian Civil War in the aftermath of World War I. Professor Zvi Gitelman (in A Century of Ambivalence, originally published in 1988) estimated that only in 1918–1919 over 1,200 pogroms took place in Ukraine, thus amounting to the greatest slaughter of Jews in Eastern Europe since 1648. The Kiev pogroms of 1919, according to Gitelman, were the first of a subsequent wave of pogroms in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred across Ukraine; although more recent assessments put the Jewish death toll at more than 100,000.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his controversial 2002 book Two Hundred Years Together provided additional statistics from research conducted by Nahum Gergel (1887–1931), published in Yiddish in 1928 and English in 1951. Gergel counted 1,236 incidents of anti-Jewish violence between 1918 and 1921, and estimated that 887 mass pogroms occurred, the remainder being classified as "excesses" not assuming mass proportions. Of all the pogroms accounted for in Gergel's research:

• About 40 percent were perpetrated by the Ukrainian People's Republic forces led by Symon Petliura. The Republic issued orders condemning pogroms, but lacked authority to intervene. After May 1919 the Directory lost its role as a credible governing body; almost 75 percent of pogroms occurred between May and September of that year. Thousands of Jews were killed only for being Jewish, without any political affiliations.
• 25 percent by the Ukrainian Green Army and various Ukrainian nationalist gangs,
• 17 percent by the White Army, especially the forces of Anton Denikin,
• 8.5 percent of Gergel's total was attributed to pogroms carried out by men of the Red Army (more specifically Semyon Budenny's First Cavalry, most of whose soldiers had previously served under Denikin). These pogroms were not, however, sanctioned by the Bolshevik leadership; the high command "vigorously condemned these pogroms and disarmed the guilty regiments", and the pogroms would soon be condemned by Mikhail Kalinin in a speech made at a military parade in Ukraine.

Gergel's overall figures, which are generally considered conservative, are based on the testimony of witnesses and newspaper reports collected by the Mizrakh-Yidish Historiche Arkhiv which was first based in Kiev, then Berlin and later New York. The English version of Gergel's article was published in 1951 in the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science titled "The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918–1921".

On 8 August 1919, during the Polish–Soviet War, Polish troops took over Minsk in Operation Minsk. They killed 31 Jews suspected of supporting the Bolshevist movement, beat and attacked many more, looted 377 Jewish-owned shops (aided by the local civilians) and ransacked many private homes. The "Morgenthau's report of October 1919 stated that there is no question that some of the Jewish leaders exaggerated these evils." According to Elissa Bemporad, the "violence endured by the Jewish population under the Poles encouraged popular support for the Red Army, as Jewish public opinion welcomed the establishment of the Belorussian SSR."

After the First World War, during the localized armed conflicts of independence, 72 Jews were killed and 443 injured in the 1918 Lwów pogrom. The following year, pogroms were reported by the New York Tribune in several cities in the newly established Second Polish Republic.

Pogroms in Europe and the Americas before World War II

Argentina 1919

In 1919, a pogrom occurred in Argentina, during the Tragic Week. It had an added element, as it was called to attack Jews and Catalans indiscriminately. The reasons are not clear, especially considering that, in the case of Buenos Aires, the Catalan colony, established mainly in the neighborhood of Montserrat, came from the foundation of the city, but could have been the result of the influence of Spanish nationalism, which at the time described Catalans as a Semitic ethnicity.

Britain and Ireland

A massacre of Armenians and Assyrians in the city of Adana, Ottoman Empire, April 1909

In the early 20th century, pogroms broke out elsewhere in the world as well. In 1904 in Ireland, the Limerick boycott caused several Jewish families to leave the town. During the 1911 Tredegar riot in Wales, Jewish homes and businesses were looted and burned over a period of a week, before the British Army was called in by the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who described the riot as a "pogrom".

In the north of Ireland during the early 1920s, violent riots which were aimed at the expulsion of a religious group took place. In 1920, Lisburn and Belfast saw violence related to the Irish War of Independence and partition of Ireland. On 21 July 1920 in Belfast, Protestant Loyalists marched on the Harland and Wolff shipyards and forced over 11,000 Catholic and left-wing Protestant workers from their jobs. The sectarian rioting that followed resulted in about 20 deaths in just three days. These sectarian actions are often referred to as the Belfast Pogrom. In Lisburn, County Antrim, on 23–25 August 1920 Protestant loyalist crowds looted and burned practically every Catholic business in the town and attacked Catholic homes. About 1,000 people, a third of the town's Catholics, fled Lisburn. By the end of the first six months of 1922, hundreds of people had been killed in sectarian violence in newly formed Northern Ireland. On a per capita basis, four Roman Catholics were killed for every Protestant.

In the worst incident of anti-Jewish violence in Britain during the interwar period, the "Pogrom of Mile End", that occurred in 1936, 200 Blackshirt youths ran amok in Stepney in the East End of London, smashing the windows of Jewish shops and homes and throwing an elderly man and young girl through a window. Though less serious, attacks on Jews were also reported in Manchester and Leeds in the north of England.

Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe

Main article: The Holocaust

Iași pogrom in Romania, June 1941

The first pogrom in Nazi Germany was the Kristallnacht, often called Pogromnacht, in which at least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps, over 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.

During World War II, Nazi German death squads encouraged local populations in German-occupied Europe to commit pogroms against Jews. Brand new battalions of Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (trained by SD agents) were mobilized from among the German minorities.

A large number of pogroms occurred during the Holocaust at the hands of non-Germans. Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was the Iași pogrom in Romania, perpetrated by Ion Antonescu, in which as many as 13,266 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police and military officials.

On 1–2 June 1941, in the two-day Farhud pogrom in Iraq, perpetrated by Rashid Ali, Yunis al-Sabawi, and the al-Futuwa youth, "rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes". Also, 300–400 non-Jewish rioters were killed in the attempt to quell the violence.

Jewish woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs during the Lviv pogroms, July 1941

In June–July 1941, encouraged by the Einsatzgruppen in the city of Lviv the Ukrainian People's Militia perpetrated two citywide pogroms in which around 6,000 Polish Jews were murdered, in retribution for alleged collaboration with the Soviet NKVD. In Lithuania, some local police led by Algirdas Klimaitis and Lithuanian partisans – consisting of LAF units reinforced by 3,600 deserters from the 29th Lithuanian Territorial Corps of the Red Army promulgated anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas along with occupying Nazis. On 25–26 June 1941, about 3,800 Jews were killed and synagogues and Jewish settlements burned.

During the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, ethnic Poles burned at least 340 Jews in a barn (Institute of National Remembrance) in the presence of Nazi German Ordnungspolizei. The role of the German Einsatzgruppe B remains the subject of debate.

Europe after World War II

After the end of World War II, a series of violent antisemitic incidents occurred against returning Jews throughout Europe, particularly in the Soviet-occupied East where Nazi propagandists had extensively promoted the notion of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy (see Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946 and Anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe, 1944–1946). Anti-Jewish riots also took place in Britain in 1947.

Pogroms in Asia and North Africa

1834 pogroms in Ottoman Syria

See also: List of massacres in Ottoman Syria, 1834 Hebron pogrom, and 1834 Safed pogrom

There were two pogroms in Ottoman Syria in 1834.

1929 in Mandatory Palestine

See also: 1929 Palestine riots and 1929 Hebron massacre

In Mandatory Palestine under British administration, Jews were targeted by Arabs in the 1929 Hebron massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots. They followed other violent incidents such as the 1920 Nebi Musa riots.

Thrace pogroms in Turkey in 1934

See also: 1934 Thrace pogroms and History of the Jews in Turkey

Constantine Pogrom in French Algeria in 1934

See also: 1934 Constantine Pogrom and History of the Jews in Algeria

British North Africa in 1945

Main article: 1945 Anti-Jewish Riots in Tripolitania

Anti-Jewish rioters killed over 140 Jews in the 1945 Anti-Jewish Riots in Tripolitania. The 1945 Anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania was the most violent rioting against Jews in North Africa in modern times. From 5 November to 7 November 1945, more than 140 Jews were killed and many more injured in a pogrom in British-military-controlled Tripolitania. 38 Jews were killed in Tripoli from where the riots spread. 40 were killed in Amrus, 34 in Zanzur, 7 in Tajura, 13 in Zawia and 3 in Qusabat.

In Syria in 1947 and Morocco 1948

See also: 1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo, 1947 Aden riots, 1948 Anti-Jewish Riots in Oujda and Jerada, and History of Moroccan Jews

Following the start of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, a number of anti-Jewish events occurred throughout the Arab world, some of which have been described as pogroms. In 1947, half of Aleppo's 10,000 Jews left the city in the wake of the Aleppo riots, while other anti-Jewish riots took place in British Aden and then in 1948 in the French Moroccan cities of Oujda and Jerada.

Pogroms against Alevis in Turkey (1978 and 1980)

See also: Alevism, Malatya massacre, Maraş massacre, and Çorum pogrom

Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982

Main article: Sabra and Shatila massacre

The Sabra and Shatila massacre is occasionally referred to as a pogrom.

1984 anti-Sikh riots

Main article: 1984 anti-Sikh riots

Sikhs were targeted in Delhi and other parts of India during a pogrom in October 1984.

Pogroms and race riots in the 21st century

2002 Gujarat pogrom

See also: 2002 Gujarat riots, Narendra Modi § 2002 Gujarat riots, and Hindutva

The 2002 Gujarat riots, also known as the Gujarat pogrom, were a three-day period of inter-communal violence in the Indian state of Gujarat.

The violence was connected to the Ayodhya dispute and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The burning of a train in Godhra on 27 February 2002, which caused the deaths of 58 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, is cited as having instigated the violence.

Following the initial riot incidents, there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three months; statewide, there were further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population of Gujarat for the next year.

2005 Cronulla riots

See also: Cronulla Race Riots, Islamophobia in Australia, and Racism in Australia

The 2005 Cronulla riots (also known as the "Cronulla Race Riots" or the "Cronulla pogrom") were a series of race riots in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Attacks in the occupied West Bank in 2008

See also: Occupied West Bank

In 2008, two attacks in the Occupied West Bank by Jewish Israeli settlers on Palestinian Arabs were labeled as pogroms by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

2017 anti-Rohingya pogroms

See also: Rohingya genocide

The 2017 Rohingya genocide, was a series of pogroms and other violence committed against the Rohingya minority of Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State. Facebook was accused of inciting mob violence via social media.

West Bank settler pogroms in the early 2020s

See also: Israeli settler violence

There were many attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank leading up to and during the full scale war in the Gaza Strip in 2023 and 2024.

The Huwara rampage in February 2023

Main article: Huwara pogrom

Israel's military was accused of 'deliberately turning blind eye' to violent riots and legal experts said the state could face war crime charges. The rioters killed one Palestinian, 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash, and wounded dozens, while torching houses and cars.

Top Israeli general in the West Bank, Yehuda Fuchs, referred to the Israeli settlers' actions as a "pogrom": "The incident in Hawara was a pogrom carried out by outlaws".

Jewish American documentary maker Simone Zimmerman also used the term pogrom to describe the attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in Hawara in February 2023. Zimmerman described these attacks as being committed by settlers while the Israeli army stood by and let it happen.

Hamas-initiated attacks on 7 October 2023

Main article: 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel

On 7 October 2023, Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades militant wing (based in the Gaza Strip), and other groups and individuals incited to join them, initiated an attack on Israel. In addition to the military, the attack also targeted civilian communities and resulted in the deaths of over 695 Israeli civilians, most of whom were Israeli Jews and some of whom were Arab Israelis. In the attacks Al Qassam and other armed groups from Gaza also took approximately 250 people, many of which were non-Israelis hostage, including infants, elderly, and people who had already been severely injured.

The 7 October attacks were described as a "pogrom" by Suzanne Rutland, who defined a pogrom as a government-approved attack on Jews and pointed out that the attacks were initiated by the Hamas, the governing authority of Gaza. Others who have described the 7 October attacks as a pogrom include then-UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, and think tanks such as the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal referred to 7 October attacks as a pogrom as well, while rejecting that label for the Huwara rampage in that same year.

Survivors of October 7 have also described the attack on their kibbutzim as pogroms.

Some sources from in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora have specifically objected to the characterisation of 7 October as a pogrom, saying the events on 7 October do not resemble the original historical pogroms in Russia. The Jerusalem Post described the 7 October attacks as "historically unique", as well as "foreseeable" and "expected". Judith Butler, controversially described the attacks as an "act of armed resistance".

West Bank pogroms in 2023

See also: Gaza genocide and Israeli incursions in the West Bank during the Israel–Hamas war § Settler violence and depopulation of villages

Khirbet Zanuta is a Palestinian Bedouin village in the Hebron Governorate in the southern West Bank, 20 km (12 mi) south of Hebron, which was ethnically cleansed during the Israel–Hamas war. Some farmers remained or returned and the attacks continued. The location has previously been attacked in 2022.

In the Palestinian village of Al-Qanoub Israeli settlers descended from the nearby settlement of Asfar and the adjacent outpost of Pnei Kedem, burned houses, set their dogs on the farm animals, and, at gunpoint, ordered the residents to leave or else they would be killed.

2024 riots against Syrian refugees in Turkey

See also: Syrians in Turkey

In 2024 there were pogroms against Syrian refugees in Turkey.

November 2024 Amsterdam attacks

The November 2024 Amsterdam attacks preceding and following the AFC Ajax - Maccabi Tel Aviv football match were described by some as a "pogrom". Israeli diplomat Danny Danon stated that, "We are receiving very disturbing reports of extreme violence against Israelis and Jews on the streets of Holland. There is a pogrom currently taking place in Europe in 2024". The Mayor of Amsterdam later said that the word "pogrom" was inappropriate and that it had been misused as "propaganda". In the weeks after the event, the initial media coverage was widely criticized for misrepresenting the event. Targets of the violence included Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, an Arab taxi driver, and pro-Palestinian protestors. In the run-up to the match, some Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were filmed pulling Palestinian flags from houses, making anti-Arab chants such as "Death to Arabs", assaulting people, and vandalising local property. Calls to target Israeli supporters were subsequently shared via social media.

List of events named pogroms

This table is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Scope: This is a partial list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word pogrom. Inclusion in this list is based solely on evidence in multiple reliable sources that a name including the word pogrom is one of the accepted names for that event. A reliable source that merely describes the event as being a pogrom does not qualify the event for inclusion in this list. The word pogrom must appear in the source as part of a name for the event.

Date	Pogrom Name	Alternative name(s)	Deaths	Targeted Group	Physical destruction	Location and region	Notes	Name needs verification
38	Alexandrian pogrom (name disputed)	Alexandrian riots		Jews in Egypt		MENA: Roman Egypt
1066	Granada pogrom	1066 Granada massacre	4,000 Jews	Jews		Europe: Iberian Peninsula
1096	1096 pogroms	Rhineland massacres	2,000 Jews	Jews		Europe: Germany
1113	Kiev pogrom (name disputed)	Kiev revolt		Jews and others.		Europe: Ukraine in the 12th century
1349	Strasbourg pogrom	Strasbourg massacre	persecution of Jews during the Black Death	Jews		Europe: Strasbourg
1391	1391 pogroms	Massacre of 1391		Jews		Europe: Iberian Peninsula
1506	Lisbon pogrom	Lisbon massacre	1,000+ New Christians	Jewish converts to Christianity		Europe: Iberian Peninsula
1563	Polotsk pogrom (name disputed)	Polotsk drownings		Jews who refused to convert		Europe: Polotsk
1648–1657	Khmelnytsky pogrom (name disputed)	Khmelnytsky massacres, or Cossack riots.	100,000	Jews		Europe: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
1821–1871	First Odessa pogroms			Jews		Europe: Russian Empire
1834	1834 Hebron pogrom	Battle of Hebron	500 Palestinians and 12 Jews (and 260 Ottoman troops)	Palestinians and Jews
	1834 Safed pogrom	1834 looting of Safed		Jews
1840		Damascus affair		Jews		MENA: Syria
1881–1884	First Russian Tsarist pogroms	Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire		Jews		Europe: Russian Empire
1881	Warsaw pogrom		2 Jews killed, 24 injured	Jews		Europe: Poland
1902	Częstochowa pogrom (name disputed)		14 Jews	Jews		Europe: Russian Partition
1903–1906	Second Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire	Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire	2,000+ Jews	Jews Antisemitism in the Russian Empire		Europe: Russian Empire
1903	First Kishinev pogrom		47 (Included above)			Europe: Kishinev, Russian Empire
1905	Second Kishinev pogrom		19 (Included above)			Europe: Kishinev, Russian Empire
1905	Kiev pogrom (1905)		100 (Included above)			Europe: Ukraine,
1906	Siedlce pogrom		26 (Included above)			Europe: Siedlce Russian Empire
1904	Limerick pogrom (name disputed)	Limerick boycott	None	Jews		Europe: Ireland
1909	Adana pogrom	Adana massacre	30,000 Armenians	Armenians		MENA / Europe: Caucasus
1910	Slocum pogrom	Slocum massacre	6 Blacks confirmed; 100 Blacks estimated	African Americans		Americas: USA
1914	Anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo	Sarajevo frenzy of hate	2 Serbs	Serbs		Europe: Balkans
1918	Lwów pogrom	Lemberg massacre	52–150 Jews 270 Ukrainians	Jews		Europe: Jews in Poland
1919	Proskurov pogrom		1500–1700 Jews	Jews		Europe: Proskurov
1919	Kiev pogroms (1919)		60+	Jews		Europe: Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
1919	Pinsk pogrom (name disputed)	Pinsk massacre	36 Jews	Jews		Europe: Pinsk, Belarus / Poland.
1919–20	Vilna pogrom	Vilna offensive	65+ Jews and non-Jews	Jews and others		Europe: Vilna
1921	Tulsa Massacre	Tulsa race massacre	39 Blacks confirmed (100-300 Blacks estimated); 26 whites confirmed	African Americans		Americas: USA
1929	Hebron pogrom	Hebron massacre	67 Jews	Jews		MENA: Mandatory Palestine
1934	1934 Thrace pogroms		None	Jews		MENA / Europe: Turkey
1936	Przytyk pogrom	Przytyk riot	2 Jews and 1 Polish	Jews		Europe: Poland
1938	November pogrom	Kristallnacht	91+ Jews	Jews		Europe: Nazi Germany
1940	Dorohoi pogrom		53 Jews	Jews		Europe: Romania
1941	Iași pogrom		13,266 Jews	Jews		Europe: Romania
1941	Antwerp Pogrom	part of the Holocaust in Belgium	0	Jews		Europe: Belgium
1941	Bucharest pogrom	Legionnaires' rebellion	125 Jews and 30 soldiers	Jews		Europe: Bucharest, Hungary
1941	Tykocin pogrom		1,400–1,700 Jews	Jews		Europe: Poland
1941	Jedwabne pogrom		380 to 1,600 Jews	Jews		Europe: Poland
1941	Farhud		180 Jewish Iraqis	Jews		MENA: Iraq
1941	Lviv pogroms		Thousands of Jews	Jews		Europe: Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
1945	Kraków pogrom		1 Jew	Jews		Europe: Poland
1946	Kunmadaras pogrom		4 Jews	Jews		Europe: Hungary
1946	Miskolc pogrom		2 Jews	Jews		Europe: Hungary
1946	Kielce pogrom		38–42 Jews	Jews		Europe: Poland
1955	Istanbul pogrom	Istanbul riots	13–30 Greeks	Greeks in Turkey (Ottoman Greeks)		MENA / Europe: Turkey
1956	1956 anti-Tamil pogrom		150 Primarily Tamils	Tamils		South Asia: Sri Lanka
1958	1958 anti-Tamil pogrom	58 riots	300 Primarily Tamils	Tamils		South Asia: Sri Lanka
1959		Kirkuk massacre	79	Iraqi Turkmen		MENA: Iraq
1966	1966 anti-Igbo pogrom		30,000-50,000 Primarily Igbo People	Igbo		Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria
14–15 August 1969	1969 Northern Ireland Anti-Catholic pogroms	1969 Northern Ireland riots	6 Catholics.	Catholics		Europe: Northern Ireland
1977	1977 anti-Tamil pogrom		300-1500 Primarily Tamils	Tamils		South Asia: Sri Lanka
1978	Malatya pogrom	Malatya massacre	8 Alevis	Alevis	businesses and houses	MENA / Europe: Turkey
1978	Maraş pogrom	Maraş massacre	111 to 500+ Alevis	Alevis	businesses, houses, printing works, pharmaiescy	MENA / Europe: Turkey
1980	Çorum pogrom	Çorum massacre	57 Alevis	Alevis	businesses and houses	MENA / Europe: Turkey
1983	Black July	1983 anti-Tamil pogrom	400–3,000 Tamils	Tamils		South Asia: Sri Lanka
1984	1984 anti-Sikh riots		8,000 Sikhs	Sikhs		South Asia: India
1988	Sumgait pogrom		26 to 300 Armenians and 6 or more Azeris	Armenians		MENA / Europe: Caucasus
1988	Kirovabad pogrom		3+ Soviet soldiers 3+ Azeris and 1+ Armenian	Armenians		MENA / Europe: Caucasus
1990	Baku pogrom		90 Armenians 20 Russian soldiers	Armenians		MENA / Europe: Caucasus
1991	Crown Heights pogrom (disputed)	Crown Heights riot	2 (1 Jew and 1 non-Jew)	Jews in the USA		Americas: USA
1994		Srebrenica massacre]	8000 Muslims	Muslims (Bosniaks)		Europe: Balkans
2002	Gujarat pogrom	2002 Gujarat riots	790 to 2000	Muslims in India		South Asia: Gujarat, India
2004	March pogrom	2004 unrest in Kosovo	16 ethnic Serbs	Serbs		Europe: Balkans
2005	Cronulla pogrom	Cronulla Race Riots		Muslims and Arab Australians		Pacific: Cronulla in Sydney, Australia.
2013	Muzaffarnagar Pogrom			Muslims in India		South Asia: Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India
2017	Rohingya pogrom	Rohingya genocide		Muslims in Myanmar (Rohingya)	housing	South Asia: Rakhine State, Myanmar
2023	Settler pogroms	Israeli settler violence		Palestinians		MENA: West Bank, Palestine.
2023	Huwara pogrom	Huwara rampage	1 Sameh Aqtash	Palestinians	cars and businesses	MENA: West Bank, Palestine.
Date	Pogrom Name	Alternative name(s)	Deaths	Targeted Group	Physical Destruction	Region	Notes	Name needs verification

See also

Main article: Outline of genocide studies

Antisemitism

• Antisemitism
• Antisemitism in Christianity
• Antisemitism in Islam
• Geography of antisemitism
• History of antisemitism
• Expulsions and exoduses of Jews

Other groups

• Hindutva
• Israeli settler violence
• Palestinian genocide allegation
• Persecution of Muslims in Myanmar

General

• Ethnic cleansing
• Ethnic conflict
• Ethnic violence
• Genocidal massacre

Further reading

Main article: Bibliography of genocide studies

• Ghassem-Fachandi, Parvis (2012). Pogrom in Gujarat: Hindu Nationalism and Anti-Muslim Violence in India (PDF). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15177-9.
• Astashkevich, Irina (2018). Gendered Violence: Jewish Women in the Pogroms of 1917 to 1921 (Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy). Academic Studies Press. ISBN 978-1-61811-616-1.
• Avrutin, Eugene M.; Bemporad, Elissa, eds. (2021). Pogroms: A Documentary History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-762929-1.
• Bemporad, Elissa (2019). Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-046647-3.
• Bergmann, Werner (2003), "Pogroms", in Heitmeyer, Wilhelm; Hagan, John (eds.), International Handbook of Violence Research, vol. 1, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 978-1-4020-1466-6
• Brass, Paul R. (6 December 2002). On the Study of Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide. Sawyer Seminar session on "Processes of Mass Killing". Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.
• Cohn, Norman (1966). Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. New York: Harper & Row. OCLC 220903085.
• Engel, David (2010). "What's in a Pogrom? European Jews in the Age of Violence". In Dekel-Chen, Jonathan (ed.). Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35520-1.
• Horvitz, Leslie A.; Catherwood, Christopher, eds. (2006). Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide. New York, NY: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-6001-6.
• Klier, John D., ed. (2011). "What was a Pogrom?". Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-89548-4.
• McDermott, Jim (2001). Northern Divisions The Old IRA and the Belfast Pogroms 1920–22. Belfast: BTP Publications. p. 28. ISBN 1-900960-11-7.
• Shelton, Dinah, ed. (2005). Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. Detroit: Macmillan Reference. ISBN 978-0-02-865847-6.
• Thackrah, John R., ed. (1987). Encyclopedia of Terrorism and Political Violence. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-7102-0659-6.
• Unowsky, Daniel. The Plunder: The 1898 Anti-Jewish Riots in Habsburg Galicia (Stanford UP, 2018)
• Veidlinger, Jeff, ed. (1987). In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust. Picador. ISBN 1-5098-6744-9.
• Velychenko, Stephen (2021). Ukraine's Revolutions and anti-Jewish Pogroms (historians.in.ua)