Portrait of prototype pogrom with pieces missing
Pogrom
Liveright, £22
Reviewed by Ben Barkow
THIS BOOK is fascinating in parts, disappointing in others and ultimately a bit of a let-down. Let’s begin with the subtitle: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. I didn’t know what the tilt of history was before I read the book, and I still don’t. Zipperstein explains that he is exploring “how history is made and remade, what is retained and elided, and why.” All perfectly sensible, but where does the tilting come in? Though, admittedly, it is a poetic and resonant phrase.
And this is somewhat characteristic of the text: in parts, it has a distinctly literary feel. There are passages of beautiful writing — which, in a way, sit uncomfortably with the ghastly subject matter — but Zipperstein is not consistent: at moments, his language can be plodding. For example, describing the pogrom in a part of Kishinev where Jews and Gentiles lived side-by- Ruins of a former synagogue in Kishinev. Right: Steven J Zipperstein
side, often in the same buildings, Zipperstein writes that the Gentiles were “unattacked”.
There is an interesting account of how the pogrom (though not in itself so unusual among pogroms of that epoch) became the symbol of Jewish suffering in the decades before the Holocaust. News and views of it raced around the world.
In the USA, it threw a very uncomfortable light on the American penchant for lynching, raping and burning black people, and mobilised Jews on the political left to act on the issue. It retains political force even today — Benjamin Netanyahu regularly refers to it and has misquoted Hayim Nachman Bialik’s poem On The Slaughter to justify calls for vengeance when Jews are attacked. It has been vaguely referred to in an episode of the TV series Homeland and Philip Roth mentions it in his novel The Plot Against America. However, in tracing the making and remaking of this history from 1903 to today, Zipperstein circumvents the Holocaust altogether. For me, this is an elision too far. Rightly or wrongly, how can we today see Kishinev other than through the lens (be it a distorting or a correcting one) of the Holocaust? Are not all pogroms seen now by the majority of people as warnings, precursors of the Holocaust?
That view may be bad history but it expresses a psychological or emotional reality. The Holocaust is a crucial topic for a book like this, especially as Kishinev’s Jews experienced it in a particularly brutal and horrific way — more horrific even than the pogrom.
And, overall, Europe is largely ignored in Pogrom, as is the small matter of Germany.
The six chapters that make up the book are best seen as individual essays about aspects of this history — worthwhile in themselves but far from offering a comprehensive account. Sadly, the whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
Ben Barkow is the Director of the Wiener Library for the study of the Holocaust and Genocide
The six chapters are best seen as individual essays