A Critical Look at the Polish ‘Pogroms’ of 1914–1920
I recently had the good fortune to read William Hagen’s Cambridge-published Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, one of the most interesting books I’ve read on Jewish-European relations since John Doyle Klier’s Oxford-published work on the Tsarist pogroms. It’s always refreshing to see scholars of European heritage tackle this subject matter, which has been dominated for too long by Jewish academics offering a one-sided, lachrymose, and propaganda-laden approach. Now eighty years old, Hagen, like Klier before him, has started publishing his most incisive work on the Jews only in the deep twilight of his career. Also echoing Klier’s work on the pogroms, Hagen’s Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland offers an unflinching look at the causes of inter-ethnic friction, often using novel or previously ignored source material, as well as a balanced and careful approach to the true extent of any violence that occurred. The result is a text that doesn’t just attempt to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, but also why it happened. The following essay is a hybrid work involving a partial review of Hagen’s work and some of my own thoughts and research on the subject.
