Victim Testimonies of the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom

These are excerpts from testimonies by survivors of the infamous 1903 pogrom (anti-Jewish ethnic riot) in Kishinev in what was then the Russian Empire (today Chișinău, Moldova). The Kishinev pogrom was marked by three days of brutal violence with no real precedent in recent Russian Jewish history. It involved not only violent assault, destruction of property, and robbery but also a great deal of far-reaching brutality framed in carnivalesque antisemitic terms: murderous attacks resulting in dozens of deaths, casual torture of victims, and much sexual assault and torture directed against Jewish women. In some cases, the attackers knew their victims well. The testimonies were gathered in part by the Hebrew poet Chaim Nahman Bialik in the immediate wake of the pogrom; the testimonies were transcribed in Yiddish but subsequently translated into Hebrew, and the italicized words indicate words in Yiddish maintained in the Hebrew translation. Readers should note that the editors have felt compelled to include testimonies that describe terrible acts of brutality and violence frankly and in detail.