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September 12: Jewish Self-Defense in Gomel
lawrencebush
September 12, 2012
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The body of Zalman Kahanski, a Jew from Gomel who took part in the Jewish self-defense.[/caption]
A Jewish self-defense squad organized by Yehezkel Henkin, a founder of the socialist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair, weighed in against pogromists in the Byelorussian town of Gomel (called “Homl” by Yiddish speakers) on this date in 1903. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, on September 11th, “trouble arose . . . when a watchman wished to buy from a Jewish woman a barrel of herring worth six rubles for one ruble fifty kopecks. In the fight which followed between the Jewish peddlers of the marketplace and the Christians who came to the aid of the watchman, one of the Christians was injured and died the same day.” (Other historical testimonials call this story a Tsarist fiction.) “The riot,” continues the encyclopedia, “was renewed on the following day . . . A number of Jews armed and began to defend themselves, but the soldiers prevented them from entering the streets where the plundering was going on, and forced them back to their homes, beating and arresting those who resisted.” According to the San Francisco Call of September 24, 1903, “The Jews . . . who attempted to rescue their co-religionists were brutally clubbed by the soldiers with guns, bayoneted or arrested. Meanwhile, recruits for the pogromshiks poured in steadily over the bridge leading from the railway . . .” By the end of the pogrom, after a couple more days, twenty-five Jews had been killed, 100 seriously injured, and more than four hundred stores and businesses had been plundered and destroyed (this in a town with 25,000 residents). Thirty-six members of the Jewish self-defense group were then prosecuted by the authorities, with eighteen sentenced to a year of penal servitude.
“This infernal manipulation was like that at Kishinev, thoroughly planned and organized. As in the Kishinev case [the previous April], a fictitious story was circulated abroad [about the riot’s cause] . . . The truth is now developing. Jews positively felt that the foul movement was at hand and they had accordingly prepared to defend their lives with such missiles as sticks and stones. They had, indeed, succeeded in warding off the hoodlums once, but on the following Monday the Jew-baiting cutthroats had gathered again and under the actual protection of the militia, and . . . they mercilessly battered, butchered, outraged and plundered.” —Rabbi J.T. Loeb, letter to the Washington Times, September 28, 1903
The body of Zalman Kahanski, a Jew from Gomel who took part in the Jewish self-defense.[/caption]
A Jewish self-defense squad organized by Yehezkel Henkin, a founder of the socialist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair, weighed in against pogromists in the Byelorussian town of Gomel (called “Homl” by Yiddish speakers) on this date in 1903. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, on September 11th, “trouble arose . . . when a watchman wished to buy from a Jewish woman a barrel of herring worth six rubles for one ruble fifty kopecks. In the fight which followed between the Jewish peddlers of the marketplace and the Christians who came to the aid of the watchman, one of the Christians was injured and died the same day.” (Other historical testimonials call this story a Tsarist fiction.) “The riot,” continues the encyclopedia, “was renewed on the following day . . . A number of Jews armed and began to defend themselves, but the soldiers prevented them from entering the streets where the plundering was going on, and forced them back to their homes, beating and arresting those who resisted.” According to the San Francisco Call of September 24, 1903, “The Jews . . . who attempted to rescue their co-religionists were brutally clubbed by the soldiers with guns, bayoneted or arrested. Meanwhile, recruits for the pogromshiks poured in steadily over the bridge leading from the railway . . .” By the end of the pogrom, after a couple more days, twenty-five Jews had been killed, 100 seriously injured, and more than four hundred stores and businesses had been plundered and destroyed (this in a town with 25,000 residents). Thirty-six members of the Jewish self-defense group were then prosecuted by the authorities, with eighteen sentenced to a year of penal servitude.
“This infernal manipulation was like that at Kishinev, thoroughly planned and organized. As in the Kishinev case [the previous April], a fictitious story was circulated abroad [about the riot’s cause] . . . The truth is now developing. Jews positively felt that the foul movement was at hand and they had accordingly prepared to defend their lives with such missiles as sticks and stones. They had, indeed, succeeded in warding off the hoodlums once, but on the following Monday the Jew-baiting cutthroats had gathered again and under the actual protection of the militia, and . . . they mercilessly battered, butchered, outraged and plundered.” —Rabbi J.T. Loeb, letter to the Washington Times, September 28, 1903
