Anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1946

The anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe following the retreat of Nazi German occupational forces and the arrival of the Soviet Red Army – during the latter stages of World War II – was linked in part to postwar anarchy and economic chaos exacerbated by the Stalinist policies imposed across the territories of expanded Soviet republics and new satellite countries. The anti-semitic attacks had become frequent in Soviet towns ravaged by war; at the marketplaces, in depleted stores, in schools, and even at state enterprises.^[1] Protest letters were sent to Moscow from numerous Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian towns by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee involved in documenting the Holocaust.^[1]

The Soviet authorities failed to address the years of Hitler's anti-Jewish propaganda, wrote Colonel David Dragunsky; anti-Semitic elements from among the former Nazi collaborators in the Soviet Union were often put in charge of state enterprises.^[1] Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels, Chairman of the JAFC, who was murdered in Minsk in January 1948, wrote that Jewish homes were not being returned. In Berdichev, Mogilev-Podolsk, Balta, Zhmerinka, Vinnitsa, Khmelnik, Stara Rafalovka and many other towns, Jews were forced to remain in the areas of former Nazi ghettos for their own safety.^[1] The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC) was targeted by Soviet authorities directly in the so-called rootless cosmopolitan campaign of the second half of the 1940s and in the Night of the Murdered Poets.^[2][3]

The JAFC Presidium met in late August, 1944, with a commander of a Jewish partisan unit from Belorussia. Answering a question concerning attitudes of the non-Jewish population towards Jews in Minsk, he stated: "... the attitude wasn't good. There have been numerous anti-semitic incidents ... a battle for apartments has started ... there are difficulties concerning employment.^[1]

Several months after the Mikhoels assassination, other Jewish figures were arrested. His death signalled the beginning of the country-wide repression of the Jews accused of espionage and economic crimes. A campaign against Zionism was launched in the fall of 1948, but by the end of the decade, Jews had disappeared from the upper echelons of the party in the republics.^[4] This was followed by the Jewish doctor-killers case of 1952–53 accompanied by publications of anti-Semitic texts in the media,^[5] and hundreds of torture interrogations.^[6] Most communities in the Soviet Union never acknowledged the involvement of the local auxiliary police in the Holocaust.^{[7][better source needed][8][9]} The vast majority of the 300,000 Schutzmannschaft members in the German-occupied territories of the USSR^[10][11] quietly returned to their former lives, including members of the Byelorussian Home Defence participating in the pacification actions, in which some 30,000 Jews were murdered,^[12] and members of Ukrainische Hilfspolizei battalions responsible for the extermination of 150,000 Jews in the area of Volhynia alone.^[13] Khrushchev proclaimed that the Jews were not welcome in Ukraine.^[14]

Upon the Soviet takeover of Poland, "only a fraction of [the Jewish] deaths could be attributed to anti-semitism," wrote Jan T. Gross.^[15] Most were caused by the raging anti-communist insurrection against the new pro-Soviet government.^[16] According to David Engel, the anti-Jewish violence in Poland from 1944–46 took the lives of at least 327 Jews.^[17]

Hundreds of returning Jews were killed in Romania.^[18][19] Anti-Jewish demonstrations, sometimes based on blood libel accusations, took place in Hungary in dozens of places,^[20][21][22] including in Kunmadaras (two or four dead victims) and Miskolc.

In Topoľčany, Slovakia, 48 Jews were seriously injured in September 1945. A number of Jews was murdered in Kolbasov in December. 13 anti-Jewish incidents called partisan pogroms reportedly took place on 1–5 August 1946, the biggest one being in Žilina, where 15 people were wounded.^[23] Partisan Congress riots took place in Bratislava in August 1946 and in August 1948, including anti-Jewish riots in several other locations.^[24][25]

In Kiev, Ukraine on September 4–7, 1945,^[26] around a hundred Jews were beaten, of whom thirty-six were hospitalized and five died of wounds.^[27] In Rubtsovsk, Russia, a number of anti-Semitic incidents took place in 1945.^[28]

• Apor, Péter; Kende, Tamás; Lônčíková, Michala; Săndulescu, Valentin (2019). "Post-World War II anti-Semitic pogroms in East and East Central Europe: collective violence and popular culture". European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire. 26 (6): 913–927. doi:10.1080/13507486.2019.1611744. S2CID 210443345.
• Nehemiah Robinson (1956). European Jewry Ten Years After the War: An Account of the Development and Present Status of the Decimated Jewish Communities of Europe. New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress. p. 100.
• State-sponsored Anti-Semitism in Postwar USSR. Studies and Research Perspectives by Antonella Salomoni