Book Description: Veidlinger, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

ByEd Rettig 
Bibliographic Information: 
Veidlinger, Jeffrey, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust, First edition (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt, and Company, 2021)
ISBN: 978-1-250-11625-3

Summary

Despite the author’s fine writing skills, this book is challenging to read. The subject material is unrelenting in its appalling descriptions of the horrible events. Through his work, we see a precedent, a creation of new methodologies, that undefended minorities face in the current era. Veidlinger based his book on the use of sources in multiple languages, drawn from multiple sources. It is a tour-de-force of academic research. In another sense, it is long overdue. The programs in Ukraine were overshadowed two decades later by the Shoah, which has drawn most investigatory attention. Nevertheless, this historian’s evaluation reveals disturbing insights. One is that the Jews, for the most part, were left with no practical options to defend themselves if they were unable to flee. Another is the discovery that these pogroms were often not the work of civilian mobs. Instead, they were military operations led by uniformed soldiers of states (or would-be states) often based on deranged conspiracy theories (and other motivations like loot, rape, simple sadism). Veidlinger takes on troubling aspects of the events and creates contexts in which we can comprehend them, if not accept them. First, for example, he deals with the high numbers of Jews in important positions in the Communist Cheka (the Bolshevik secret police). Second, he deals with the often inept, sometimes inciting, role of clergy among the Christian populations. Third, he shows us how the original democratic proclamations of the independent Ukrainian state created illusions that disappointed when they failed how port-fascist anti-communism shaped abuse of the entire population. Finally, he points to the impact of ongoing war and violence on desensitizing people to what they were doing. Veidlinger also points to the role played by the 1918-1921 programs in shaping Jewish responses in Western Europe, North America, and the Zionist movement in Mandatory Palestine. Most shocking, he shows how the methodologies of arousing widespread antisemitic violence, the use of uniformed forces, and the sense that all Jews were appropriate objects for “pay-back” for grievances genuine or imagined grievances played a key role when the Nazis conquered Ukraine. These characteristics shaped the Ukrainian Shoah, where Nazis and collaborators slaughtered much of the Jewish population before the advent of industrialized concentration camps dedicated to mass slaughter through the use of gas chambers.

Style

Professor Veidlinger is a capable, even eloquent, writer. However, unfortunately, he writes of material that is in many ways unbearable.

Classroom

Reading this book will be difficult for high school students unless they are exceptionally intellectually and emotionally mature. However, even college students will benefit from classroom preparation for the experience. In this book, graduate students will find a model for broad yet in-depth research and the development of historical conclusions.

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