A thorough and fair examination of an event whose mystery seems so misplaced.
A re-examination of one of the most lavishly remembered events of Russian Jewish history that is also the most edited and misunderstood.
As Zipperstein (Jewish Culture and History/Stanford Univ.; Imagining Russian Jewry, 2015, etc.) shows, the April 1903 pogrom at Kishinev was neither the first nor the last atrocity against the Jews, but it stands out for a number of reasons. Due to the explosion of worldwide communications and Kishinev’s proximity to Europe, the news spread quickly. It was only 100 miles west of the notoriously porous Romanian border, favorable to unchecked smuggling and the dissemination of Czarist suppressed news. After the tragedy, there was a singular coherence of all Jewish political movements to condemn and provide relief. Michael Davitt and Hayyim Nahman Bialik, two writers, ensured that the news of Kishinev dominated the press. Both writers condemned Jewish male cowardice, but neither mentioned the 250 men who gathered to fight back, perhaps because it was ineffective. Throughout the decades since, debate has been robust, particularly regarding Bialik’s pogrom poem, “In the City of Killing,” which was intended as commemoration rather than history but was included in many courses of Jewish study. Like many politicized lessons, this ended up a product of half-truths, mythologies, and forgeries, even a century later. Looking for a cause of the massacre, the author points to Pavel Krushevan, an anti-Semitic local publisher whose publications were rife with blood libel. Zipperstein shows with little doubt Krushevan’s hand in fomenting the riot and his role as principal “author” of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a ridiculous, fabricated text that nonetheless became the most influential anti-Semitic text ever produced. The author ably illustrates the wide influence of this pogrom, with comparisons to American violence against Southern blacks, the formation of the NAACP, and, especially, Hitler’s reliance on the Protocols.
A thorough and fair examination of an event whose mystery seems so misplaced.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-269-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
HISTORY | JEWISH | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
