Elissa Bemporad - Legacy of Blood

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Oxford University Press 2019

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bemporad, Elissa, author.

Title: Legacy of blood : Jews, pogroms, and ritual murder in

the lands of the Soviets / Elissa Bemporad.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019021019| ISBN 9780190466459 (hardback) |

ISBN 9780190466466 (updf) | ISBN 9780190466473 (epub) |

ISBN 9780190466480 (online)

Subjects: LCSH: JewsEurope, EasternHistory20th century. |

PogromsEurope, Eastern#2014;History20th century. |

Blood accusationEurope, EasternHistory20th century. |

Europe, EasternEthnic relations.

Classification: LCC DS135.E83 B45 2019 | DDC 305.892/404709/04dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021019

Ai miei genitori, Nino e Donna, per aver sempre riso e sorriso

The idea to write this book first came to me several years ago, during a memorable semester I spent in 2007 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Here, I enjoyed the company of wonderful colleagues and friends, benefited from the tranquility of the reading room at the Mavydas National Library of Lithuania, and relished hearing my son Elia, then two years old, begin to speak Yiddish. But moving from the initial idea to the final product and figuring out how to write this book took me a long time. It is a real pleasure to thank the many friends and colleagues who helped along the way, with advice, insight, and cheer. They include Zachary Baker, Olga Bertelsen, Emanuele DAntonio, Gennady Estraikh, Alexander Ivanov, Cristiana Facchini, Krysia Fisher, Alik Frenkel, Ziva Galili, Zvi Gitelman, Mihaly Kalman, Eileen Kane, Dov Ber Kerler, Hillel Kieval, Anna Kushkova, Natalya Lazar, Marina Mogilner, Sasha Polyan, Alyssa Quint, Klaus Richter, Per Anders Rudling, Joshua Schreier, Sasha Senderovich, Anna Shternshis, Alla Sokolova, Darius Staliunas, Katrin Steffen, Magda Teter, Jeff Veidlinger, Debby Yalen, Ken Waltzer, Bob Weinberg, Saul Zaritt, and Arkadi Zeltser. In particular, I wish to single out Gene Avrutin, Marion Kaplan, and Amir Weiner for their generous reading and constructive comments on draft chapters.

I thank Konstantin Akisha for his superior knowledge of Soviet and Ukrainian artists of the 1920s; Oksana Barshynova, curator at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, in Kyiv, for her kindness and promptness; and to the National Art Museum of Ukraine for allowing me to use the extraordinary painting Jewish pogrom by artist Manuil Shekhtman as the cover of this book.

I have benefited from the intellectual generosity of colleagues and friends who took the time to engage with parts of the book at workshops and talks. I am grateful for the feedback I received at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw; at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (thank you to Ruth Von Bernuth); at Yale University (thank you to Elli Stern); at the University of Illinois (thank you to Harriet Murav); at Brandeis University (thank you to ChaeRan Freeze and Sylvia Fried); and at Harvard University (thank you to Maxim Shrayer).

I am truly grateful to be a member of the History Department at Queens College, with supportive colleagues who value what I do as a scholar and as a teacher. QC provided generous research and administrative assistance, allowing me to take time off from teaching. The research and writing of this book have been made possible by the generous support of different institutions. These include The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Center for Jewish History in New York City, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program, and the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center CUNY.

I am indebted to the staff of the many archives and libraries where I conducted the research for this book. In Kyiv, I am thankful to the archivists at the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine (TsDAVOU), at the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine (TsDAGOU), and at the State Archives of Kyiv Oblast (DAKO). In Lviv, I am thankful to Evheny Poliakov for his assistance at the State Archives of the Lviv Oblast (DALO). In Vilnius, I am grateful to Marius Emuis for his assistance at the Lithuanian Special Archives (Section of KGB Documents) (LYA). My special thanks go to Tetyana Batanova and Iryna Serheyeva for helping me uncover some of the treasures at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. In New York, I am immensely grateful to the staff and archivists at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in particular to Misha Mitsel; to the staff and archivists at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in particular to Lyudmila Sholokhova, Gunnar Berg, and Leo Greenbaum; and to the staff at the Center for Jewish History, in particular to Ilya Slavutskiy. In Jerusalem, I benefited from the assistance of the staff and archivists at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CHJP), in particular Benjamin Lukin; and in Washington, DC, from the staff and archivists at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in particular the indefatigable Vadim Altskan.

My editor at Oxford University Press, Nancy Toff, took an interest in this project and offered generous advice as it took shape; I am grateful for her tremendously helpful suggestions. Thanks also to Nancys colleagues at OUP for guiding this book to publication, in particular to Lena Rubin, and to Lori Jacobs for copyediting.

A special grazie to those friends who have come to the rescue over the years, especially to Natasha Hirshhorn, Harriet Jackson, Laura Koeppel, Margherita Pascucci, and Adolfo Profumo. Thank you to my Modena friends, Susanna, Giada, Sibilla, and Davide as well as to my dear Simonas and Fede Larini. Thank you to my siblings Jonathan, Hali, Micol, and Joel: as Natalia Ginzburg noted, I could recognize you in the darkness of a cave, amid millions of people. Thank you to my kids, Elia and Sonia: To put it simply, I adore you! Thank you to the love of my life, Dovid Fishman, for his curiosity, openness, criticism, and warmth, and for learning Italian quite well. I thank my parents, Nino and Donna, for their unyielding support even when faced with the craziest ideas that a daughter can confront her parents with. They taught me the beauty of books and the magic of building bridges where there are none, and they showed me the wisdom of smiles and laughter. I dedicate this book to them.