The Forgotten Pogroms, 1918

Abstract

The outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in the former Habsburg lands in the fall of 1918 are often overlooked, in part because of the subsequent violence in Hungary (1919–1921), in part because of the myth of Czechoslovak exceptionalism that emerged during the interwar period. It is tempting to view the post-war power vacuum as the main context – and catalyst – for this wave of violence that erupted after the collapse of the monarchy. A closer look at the anti-Jewish violence, however, suggests that it was part of the state-building process, or at least part of an effort to demarcate the exclusive terms of membership in the newly-established states. In explaining or justifying the anti-Jewish violence, perpetrators (and their supporters) often invoked the canard of Jewish “provocation” or the myth of Jewish “power” as part of a larger discourse of exclusion that placed Jews outside the Hungarian, Polish, or Czechoslovak body politic.