The Tuchyn Pogrom: The Names and Faces Behind the Violence, Summer 1941

Abstract

ABSTRACT On the night of July, 6, 1941, under the cover of darkness, a group of Ukrainian assailants armed with bats, shovels, and other weapons attacked their Jewish neighbors in Tuchyn, a small town just outside of Rivne, killing dozens and wounding more. Through the testimony of perpetrators, victims, and local witnesses, this article not only reestablishes the events leading up to, during, and following the pogrom against Tuchyn’s Jews, but also provides biographical sketches of the local perpetrators and those in the community who enabled it. While there has been increasingly sophisticated work on the summer 1941 pogroms in Eastern Europe, scholars have yet to identify and thoroughly analyze local participants. From a deeper probe into local perpetrators’ organizational affiliations, social networks, and their place in the quickly changing and dynamic political situation, this article questions the analytical categories we use to frame local perpetrators, as well as the pogroms. In doing so it offers new insights on the participants, while demonstrating the possibilities for new more dynamic avenues for future research on pogrom violence.