Pogrom

A pogrom (Russian: погро́м) is a violent mob attack generally against Jews, and often condoned by the forces of law, characterized by killings and/or destruction of homes and properties, businesses, and religious centers. The term originally entered English to describe 19th and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire; similar attacks against Jews at other times and places also became known as pogroms. The word is now also sometimes used to describe attacks against non-Jewish ethnic or religious groups.

Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev Pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906), and after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Lwów pogrom (1918), and Kiev Pogroms (1919). The most significant pogrom in Nazi Germany was the Kristallnacht of 1938, in which at least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps, over 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.

Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iaşi pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – and the Jedwabne pogrom in Poland. Post World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom, the 1947 Aleppo pogrom.

Pogroms against non-Jews include the 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom against Igbos in southern Nigeria, the 1920 Shusha pogrom, the 1988 Sumgait pogrom and the Kirovabad pogrom, in which ethnic Armenians were targeted.