Post World War 2 Pogroms in Eastern Europe – Kiev Pogrom

With the liberation of Ukraine by the Soviet Red Army from German occupation (May 1943-August 1944), Jewish refugees began to filter back to their natives areas from throughout the Soviet Union. In areas where there were large concentrations of refugees, particularly in the east, Ukrainian authorities took on a policy of issuing permits (propuski) to limit and filter the amount of people that could return. Historian Mordechai Altshuler asserts that there exists some evidence that the Ukrainian authorities tried to limit the number of permits granted to Jews. He claims Ukrainian officials hinted that in practice, an unwritten policy was implemented that “one should be somewhat restrictive with regard to Jews who wish to return to the liberated areas.”[1] Unsurprisingly, Jewish refugees interpreted this as discrimination and anti-Semitism.

Those Jews that did manage to return were met with surprise and hostility. In September 1944, the prominent Jewish author Ilya Ehrenburg reported that the Chairman of the District of Kalinindorf told Jewish returnees: “Why did you return? Nobody needs you here, nobody called you here.”[2] Thus, the reappearance of Jews in the Ukrainian landscape was perceived as not only surprising but also threatening. This sentiment is reflected in the following testimony:

We returned to Kiev in July 1944. First we entered the courtyard where we had lived for some 15 years, the neighbors met us angrily, when she saw us, the girl Lidia screamed: “I’m going to tell the Germans that the Zhids have come.”[3]

This feeling was shared by many in the population and was magnified considerably as more Jews returned and began reorganizing their lives in all aspects of society. To the casual Ukrainian observer that saw Jews returning to their jobs, particularly in the cultural and government sectors, the Jewish returnees aroused feelings of contempt. Many Ukrainians were of the opinion that the authorities actually preferred Jews to Ukrainians, and even went so far as to make the bold claim that the authorities were ‘judaizing’ the Ukrainian SSR.[4] In response to such sentiments the Ukrainian authorities, who were sensitive to such opinions and accusations developed a policy of discrimination against Jews in employment. As Mordechai Altshuler points out:

Considerable segments of the Soviet apparatus, themselves tainted by such anti-Jewish attitudes, gave expression in both word and deed to the undeclared policy of limiting the Jews’ opportunities in finding jobs in the Ukraine. This created a kind of symbiosis between public opinion and the policy adopted by large segments of the Soviet apparatus.[5]

As this unwritten policy applied itself to the daily lives of Jewish citizens in Ukraine, their already poor quality of life further decreased as anti-Semitism within the population increased. In order to bring the matter to the attention of the Communist Party, an anonymous individual took it upon himself to draft a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine with an appeal for help:

In Kiev, one finds anti-Semitism on a large scale. The Fascists left behind agents to fan hatred against the Jews. Every negative phenomenon, no matter how small, is blown up out of proportion and attributed to the Jews. Evidently, many of the senior officials have forgotten that our great Communist Party educates its members in the spirit of internationalism, and that the founder of Marxim, Karl Marx, was of Jewish origin. This theory was realized by Comrade Lenin and is also being realized by our leader, Comrade Stalin.

I do not for a minute doubt that the Party is waging a campaign against the great evil of anti-Semitism. The Jews are the first victims of Fascism. Tens of thousands of the Jewish proletariat and workers’ families who were unable to be evacuated from Kiev were slaughtered down to the last one and thrown into Babi Yar.

I think that the struggle against anti-Semitism, that great evil, must engage every Party member. For this reason, I propose holding closed-door meetings of Party members in Kiev to discuss the fight against anti-Semitism since it is increasing rather than decreasing.[6]

The letter was a direct appeal to the leadership of the Communist Party to come to terms with, and take action against, the existing anti-Semitism that was ubiquitous in Ukraine. The document from which this letter was extracted consisted of a single page with no indication that it was passed on to the appropriate officials or even summarized for them.

It would seem that the Soviet leadership did not want to deal with the problem of returning Soviet Jews at all. Stalin himself would not even recognize the suffering that Jews endured during the war. After the war, Stalin emphatically declared, “The Soviet and German people had been the two main victims of the Second World War.”[7] He made absolutely no mention of Jewish victims. Despite Moscow’s detached attitude to the new Jewish problem, the news they received from liberated Ukraine on a daily basis was horrendous.

After an alarming increase of anti-Semitism in Ukraine, the upper echelons of the Communist Party finally decided to investigate the causes. In early August 1944, Gersonskii the deputy head of the Second Department of the Ukrainian NKGB drafted a memorandum on manifestations of anti-Semitism in Ukraine. The document was reviewed by the Chief of the Second Department of the NKGB, S. R. Savchenko, who then submitted it as an official memorandum to the General Secretary of Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev.[8]

The document was divided into three sections. In the first part of the assessment, the author explained what he believed led to the increase of anti-Semitism in Ukraine: (1) the influence of Nazi propaganda and of Ukrainian nationalist propaganda during and after the Nazi occupation; (2) “the very low percentage of Jews in the ranks of the Red Army,”—this was not entirely true and more likely represents the author’s readiness to accept anti-Semitic rumors;[9] (3) the Jews spread rumors that the leading positions on the Communist government apparatus will soon be occupied by Jews, and that the Ukrainians will be expelled and punished for their anti-Semitism; (4) and finally the Jews’ alleged evasion of conscription into the Red Army, and their refusal to enlist for work in the Donbas mines.[10]

The second part of the document analyzes these causes but does not go into great depth. Rather than searching for the root of the problem, the Party official who wrote this document understood Ukrainian anti-Semitism to be commonplace, something that can not be rooted out. Instead of confronting the lingering effects of German propaganda, the Communist apparatus looked for other reasons, namely Jewish Nationalism. The second part is short, only a few paragraphs, but the third part is several pages long and points to the assertion of Zionism as the cause of Ukrainian anti-Semitism.

The last section of the document dealt primarily with examples of Zionism or “Jewish Nationalism” which the author argued provoked the population to anti-Semitism. First, the author confronts the issue of Zionism by illustrating its manifestations and linking them as divergent from Communism. He argued that Zionists had conveyed false information that American Jewry lived better than their counterparts did in the Soviet Union, presumably thereby encouraging emigration. Secondly, he made several points, which ostensibly were not related to Zionism whatsoever. He claimed that the circulation of rumors that the Soviet authorities will provide the Jews a territory where they could pursue their own national aspirations would incite anti-Semitism. While it may have had that effect, it was not related to Zionism, which, as a nationalist ideology, specifically sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Finally, the author asserts that the appeal by Soviet Jews to the leaders of the Soviet Union to act against anti-Semitism would also increase anti-Semitism. How this would be so is unclear and he failed to mention that anti-Semitism was already quite prevalent in the Soviet Union. Zionism was a potential solution to that problem.

While some of the points made in the first section of the assessment seem sensible in explaining postwar anti-Semitism in Ukraine, the subsequent connection that the author creates between anti-Semitism and Jewish Nationalism is unconvincing, as it does not make sense that the Jewish desire to leave the USSR for Palestine would inflame anti-Semitism. [11] Rather it would seem that the author sought to distance the Communist Party from anti-Semitic issues and place responsibility on the Jews for their condition rather than the leadership.

Despite awareness of the Jewish plight at all levels of the Communist apparatus, the authorities still failed to act on the problem and let it linger. As more and more Jews found ways around the political obstructions that Ukrainian authorities prepared for them and returned to liberated areas in Ukraine, anti-Semitism inevitably kept increasing. Property restitution became a major obstacle for returning Jews as many of them found their previous homes and apartments occupied by Ukrainians who were unwilling to move. It was because of such circumstances and ethnic strife that a pogrom erupted in Kiev on 7 September 1945.

The roots of this pogrom stemmed from the murder of two Red Army soldiers, Ivan Grabar and Nikolai Melnik, who were on leave from their units in occupied Germany. The murderer was a Ukrainian NKVD officer of Jewish origin who had survived the war and lived with his wife in Kiev.[12] On 4 September 1945, the NKVD officer, Joseph Rosenstein stopped at a neighborhood store in order to purchase bread for himself and his wife. After departing from the bakery, Rosenstein walked down Bazarnaya Street on his way home when he observed two men in Red Army uniforms and visibly intoxicated, walking in his general direction. As they were about to pass, one of the soldiers deliberately shouldered Rosenstein and muttered several anti-Semitic remarks. Rosenstein immediately identified himself as an NKVD officer and questioned the intentions of the two soldiers. In the course of the conversation the two men showered Rosenstein with anti-Jewish insults such as ‘zhyd’, and accused him of being a ‘Tashkent rebel,’ presumably making fun of the thousands of Jews who fled the western Soviet Union for the east ahead of the Nazi invasion. Angry and irritated, Rosenstein defended himself by accusing the soldiers of being ‘German skins,’ a derogetory expression meaning collaborators with the German enemy. The fiery confrontation erupted into a fight and the two drunken thugs beat Rosenstein ruthlessly, ridiculing him with anti-Semitic slurs throughout the beating. Lying on the ground, embarrassed and battered, Rosenstein watched as the two soldiers escaped down the street and into the building at No. 14 Kitaevskaya Street.[13]

Free from the torment of Grabar and Melnik, Rosenstein returned to his apartment where he confided in two friends, Grigory Spector and his son, Boris Grigorovich, about what had just happened to him. Boris Grigorovich was an associate of Rosenstein who worked as a switchman in the camp system of the NKVD.[14] They encouraged him to seek vengeance and vindicate the beating he had just received. Rosenstein changed his clothing into official NKVD attire, took his pistol, and along with Spector and his son, Boris, began walking toward the apartment building where the two soldiers had entered. Rosenstein’s wife, worried for his safety, ran after him.[15]

According to a female witness who lived in the same apartment building, Rosenstein entered the courtyard and yelled at one of the residents: “Tell me, German dog, where did you hide those bandits?”[16] With the help of Boris Spector, Rosenstein located the whereabouts of Grabar and Melnik. He entered the apartment with his pistol drawn and yelled, “hands up.” Reports differ as to what exactly transpired next. One report alleges that Rosenstein demanded that the two soldiers follow him to the local police headquarters, but they refused stating that he had no jurisdiction over their arrest. The argument heated up and Rosenstein shot the two men in a fit of rage.[17] Upon hearing the gunfire, an ethnic Ukrainian police officer, Puznakov, who happened to be patrolling down Kitaevskaya Street, ran to the apartment building at No. 14 Kitaevskaya Street and tried to apprehend Rosenstein. In the course of the struggle between the two, Rosenstein tried to shoot Puznakov and flee the scene, but the war-hardened veteran responded by disarming and arresting Rosenstein.[18] A differing account claims that Rosenstein entered the apartment with his pistol drawn but did not demand that the soldiers follow him to the police station. After a brief, yet heated argument, Rosenstein shot the soldiers entirely unprovoked, first Grabar and then Melnik as he tried to escape.[19] Rosenstein tried to flee the scene but was immediately apprehended by waiting police officers outside the building.[20]

The two dead were Ivan Grabar and Nikolai Melnik. Both of the slain were residents of Kiev and active soldiers in the Red Army. Grabar was a Ukrainian national born in 1922, and had worked as an electrician in a factory prior to the outbreak of World War II. He was not a member of the Communist Party.[21] Grabar had spent the first part of the war in the Red Army, until his partisan unit was encircled and he made his way back to Kiev, where he lived with his mother; both had participated in underground activities. Following the liberation of Kiev on 6 November 1943, Grabar returned to active duty where from then on he participated in the assault on Prague, Dresden and Berlin. For this, he was awarded a medal for bravery.[22] Nikolai Melnik was a colleague of Grabar’s from the Red Army; both had been in the same unit. Grabar, in the weeks prior to his death, had petitioned his commanding officers for a temporary leave so that he could resolve a housing dispute his mother was fighting in Kiev. The commanders granted his request for leave and allowed Melnik to accompany him.[23]

During the German occupation of Ukraine, thousands of apartments were seized by ethnic Ukrainians after their Jewish neighbors had fled to the east or been killed. Some took Jewish apartments simply because they were more spacious while others occupied Jewish apartments because of necessity. Faced with daily bombardments and combat in urban areas, many residents were left homeless and the option of seizing vacated Jewish apartments was an acceptable solution.[24]

The apartment where Grabar and his mother lived during and after the war was in reality the apartment of the Jewish Ribchinski family, which had fled to Uzbekistan following the launch of Operation Barbarosa on the eastern front and the subsequent German occupation of Kiev. In 1943, the apartment of Grabar’s mother had been damaged in a mortar attack and so she moved into the vacated apartment of the Ribchinski family.[25] The family returned in February 1945 and immediately contacted the City Prosecutor’s Office in order to have their apartment returned to them.

Property restitution was a delicate issue in the post-war period, particularly in regards to returning Jews. The pervasive assumption among the Ukrainian population of Kiev was that all the Jews were either dead or not coming back if they were alive. Nevertheless, Jews did return and demanded their belongings and homes be returned to them. The decision process was long and tedious; sometimes property issues were never resolved and non-Jewish squatters remained in Jewish apartments. Grabar’s mother was part of these proceedings as she sought to defend her claim on the apartment of the Ribchinski family. Seeing as her son was a decorated Red Army soldier she wrote him asking for his assistance in the matter and it was under this circumstance that Grabar returned to Kiev from occupied Germany.[26]

Grabar took up the issue for his mother and had several meetings with the Prosecutor’s Office in Kiev. According to one conversation Grabar had with one of the prosecutor of the city of Kiev several days before his death, he said with regard to the apartment dispute, “we are fighting while our apartments are being occupied by zhydy (Jews).”[27] The inflammatory remarks Grabar had said that day on Bazarnaya Street directed at Rosenstein were clearly reflective of his prejudice and loathing for Jews. Once Grabar had identified Rosenstein as a Jew, a confrontation was inevitable.

Immediately following the murder of the two Red Army soldiers and the subsequent arrest of Rosenstein a crowd of people, small at first, but eventually growing to a thousand, began congregating around No. 14 Kitaevskaya Street. They shouted anti-Semitic slogans and physically assaulted Rosenstein’s wife, Grigory Spector and his son Boris.[28] Two other Jews walking by the scene were also beaten because of their Jewish appearance.[29] Many more people could have been beaten or killed had it not been for the arrival of several Communist Party officials. Secretary Gorkoma, Gorbaan, Davidov, Moskalech, and Secretary Kornichki from the Kaganovich raikom spoke to the mob and dispersed the crowd. In response to the anti-Semitic popular reaction following the murder, on the following day, 5 September 1945, the Kaganovich raikom Communist Party issued a statement condemning the riot.[30] The statement went unnoticed as two days later in the course of the funeral procession a pogrom broke out that left hundreds of casualties, all Jewish.

The procession took place on 7 September 1945, three days after the deaths of Grabar and Melnik. It was attended by over three hundred people, many of whom were related neither to Grabar nor to Melnik. Some participated simply as an expression of solidarity with the dead while others partook and instigated violence. The procession began at the morgue of the October Hospital in Kiev and progressed through the city to the Lukyanovskii Cemetary. The procession did not take the shortest, most efficient route to the cemetery; but rather, it took a route that passed through well-known Jewish neighborhoods. The procession also passed by the Galtiskii Market, where many Jews did their shopping. Clearly, the goal of the procession was to instill terror in the Jewish population.[31] According to the report prepared by the Kiev authorities, the following anti-Semitic actions took place. At the corner of Pushkinskaya Street and Savchenko Boulevard two mourners participating in the funeral beat two Jewish civilians walking in the opposite direction of the procession.[32] When the procession reached the Galitsky Market, a few mourners separated from the group and beat a Jewish worker in the market office. Minutes later on Dmitrievsky Street, people walking behind the coffins noticed a Jew looking through his window at the crowd; they proceeded to throw stones at the window. Soon after, a mixed group of soldiers and civilians beat a Jew who was walking by.[33] Altogether, in the course of the procession that lasted for several hours, over one hundred Jews were beaten, thirty-six were taken to the hospital as a result of their injuries and five Jews were killed. It was one of the largest anti-Jewish pogroms in postwar Ukraine.

There were many theories about the causes and reasoning behind the pogrom. The pogrom did not occur simply because Rosenstein, a Jew, murdered two Red Army soldiers. Events such as these do not occur spontaneously without outside ideological assistance. The murder of the two Red Army soldiers was simply the pretext for the pogrom to take place just as blood libel had been the pretext for the multitude of pogroms that had taken place in Eastern Europe both before and after the war. An internal review by Communist Party officials investigating the event on 5 September 1945 concluded in their assessment that the incident on Bazarnaya Street took place because of Grabar and Melnik’s anti-Semitic attitudes.[34] Although this particular review is dated 5 September 1945, two days before the pogrom, it can be inferred that the pogrom which followed the murders arose as a consequence of the unrestrained anti-Semitism that poisoned many Ukrainians and was ubiquitous in the Communist leadership of the Ukrainian SSR. One little spark was all it took to ignite the tragedy.[35]

The pogrom pointed out that denying the existence of national tensions in a socialist society where everyone was thought to be equal was an archaic notion. The government did not do its duty in taking steps to protect the Jewish population that was quite clearly lacking the ability to defend themselves. A group of loyal, Communist, demobilized soldiers from Kiev argued this point in a letter that was written to the very top of the Soviet government, Stalin and Beria:

We, the group, of demobilized Communist front line soldiers were despondent when we learned what happened in Kiev in the capital of Ukraine. To tell the truth we had not recognized our city, not only by its external look but also by the political situation, which currently exists there.

Here the influence of the Germans is felt very strongly. There is no struggle whatsoever with the consequences of their political wrecking. All kinds of nationalists threw aside all restraints, sometimes these nationalists are members of the Communist Party. The spirit of internationalism is not felt in Kiev.

Here yet unseen in our Soviet reality anti-Semitism rages. The word ‘kike’ or ‘beat the kikes’ the favorite logo of German fascists, Ukrainian nationalists is heard on the streets with deep vigor, in the trains, in the trolleys, in the shops, in the markets and even some Soviet organizations. In another more veiled form, it takes place in the party apparatus up to the central committee of the communist party of Ukraine. All of these in the end led to the pogrom, which recently took place in Kiev. Here in Kiev happened the first pogrom during Soviet times. As a result of unbridled anti-Semitism which rages in Kiev many Jews daily are subject to insults, beatings, and nobody from the government tries to protect them.

The pogrom happened because the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine did not provide the population with any political educational work in regards to the Jews, the nation which suffered the most at the hands of the Germans. But on the contrary the Central Committee placed itself at the head of arousing hatred against the Jews and national differences. The Central Committee led these shameful, disgraceful, anti-Semitic politics, which are alien to our party and Soviet government. And these politics brought about this pogrom. Our socialistic motherland was disgraced. That the heads of the Communist Party in Ukraine and this is them who established the special regime towards Jews, this is them who organized expulsion of the Jews from the Soviet and party apparatus. [36]

The letter touches upon subjects that tackle the ideological foundations of anti-Semitism in Ukraine in the postwar era. The authors mention the influence left behind by the Germans after two years of occupation. While Goebbels’ anti-Semitic propaganda may indeed have had a lasting effect on the population, it was not the sole factor in postwar anti-Semitism. Anti-Jewish attitudes among the Ukrainian population had not materialized solely, during and after the war but rather, Ukrainian anti-Semitism was already present to some degree in the population. Although it rarely led to violence, anti-Semitic propaganda campaigns of the 1920’s placed responsibility on Jews for the problems of the ethnic population.[37] These influences persisted throughout the interwar period and into the war as well. During the war, Ukrainian nationalists were some of the most ardent and brutal anti-Semites who took advantage of the German occupation for their own national aspirations while simultaneously taking a nefarious role in the execution of the Holocaust.

Confirming that Nazi propaganda had merely a minor influence on anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union is an event which took place thousands of kilometers from the front line in the town of Rubtsovsk which never fell under German occupation. Three months before the Kiev pogrom, a letter was sent to the chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, N.M. Shvernik, from the town in the Altaí region. The letter described a number of anti-Semitic attacks, which took place during a soccer game at a local stadium on 8 July 1945. The author stated that the town’s authorities, including the local Party Committee’s, the militia, and the Prosecutor’s Office contributed a significant role in the provocation of the anti-Jewish turmoil.[38] The demobilized soldiers from Kiev argued the same point in their letter to Stalin and Beria claiming that the Kiev authorities were responsible for the pogrom due to their lack of action and inherently anti-Semitic policies. This confirms that many anti-Jewish manifestations that arose in post-war Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union occurred less as a result of German propaganda, but rather because of the entrenched anti-Semitic attitudes of the local authorities and the increasing influence and exploitation of anti-Semitism among the top levels of the government.

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