"In the Land of Pogroms: When Israel Dies..." - a detailed report on the Ukrainian and Russian pogroms against the ...

"In the Land of Pogroms: When Israel Dies..." - a detailed report on the Ukrainian and Russian pogroms against the Jews, from Bernard Lakcha's tour of Jewish towns in Russia and Ukraine - Dedicated copy by the author

Au pays des pogromes: quand Israël meurt... "In the Land of Pogroms: When Israel Dies..." An extensive report published by the author Founder of the League Against the Pogroms Bernard Lecache, after a 3-month tour of Jewish towns in late 1926, documenting the Ukrainian and Russian pogroms against Jews. Published by EDITIONS DU PROGRES CIVIQUE. Paris, 1927 - First edition - Dedicated copy by the author.

The book Includes harsh photos of murdered victims and Jews wounded in the pogroms, and Jews mourning their loved ones.

In May 1926, in the heart of Paris, the Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard assassinated Symon Petliura, a Ukrainian nationalist he blamed for pogroms that destroyed his family. The author Bernard Lecache became interested in the case and went to Ukraine to investigate whether Jews were indeed being slaughtered and murdered everywhere. Lecache investigated the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and after three months of inquiry, published the horrifying results in February-March 1927. In his book, he documents the terrible things he saw and heard from the Jews themselves in each town he visited. The drawn picture was horrifying, even changing the course of his own life. After this journey he decided to devote his life to fighting antisemitism, establishing the "League Against Pogroms" that same year.

In the beginning he writes: "All roads in Ukraine lead to pogroms... Today I finalize fifteen thousand kilometers, over three hundred testimonies personally collected, a mass of documentation, daily contact with survivors brought me to know the truth about a bloody dark age... The Jews looked to the graves... and stroked their beards with sad words, they spoke of looting, rape, fire, death... They were without tears, without hatred. Their lives had long been taken away...". Lecache met Jews in every district he visited, they told him of the riots, harassment, pogroms and murders. They provided the names of the murderers and their murdered family members and friends, all documented in the book before us. Each Jew is mentioned by name with the story of their abuse, for example: "A merchant in Borchtchigovka not far from Berditchev, Aharon Shrolovich Oksman had a large family. What happened today. Here it is: "In September 1919 the Petliurists broke into my home, grabbed my wife and three children by force and threw them into the burning neighbor's house. They all burned: my 26 year old wife, my daughters who were 7 and 9, my little one who was 4". "Is that all?" I asked. "They also shot and killed my 60 year old father and threw them into the flames where they all burned, my brother, his wife and four children...". Lecache brings hundreds of hard to read testimonies which he heard from Ukrainian and Russian Jews about what the rioters did to them and their families.

The book includes 10 photo plates of the pogrom victims: relatives mourning loved ones murdered in Gorodische, mourners in the cemetery after the Cherkasy massacre with some not yet buried, Jewish victims piled in the middle of the "Infants' Square" in Zhitomir, slaughtered children in Chortkiv being brought to burial, youths tortured and murdered in the morgue at the Vassilkov cemetery, bones of victims discovered a year after the 1919 Denikin mob pogroms, wounded orphans in a small Podolia village, wounded elderly in the Proskurov pogroms, victims murdered in the Proskurov cemetery.

The book's title is based on the old saying "When Israel dies, Israel is reborn". Map of Ukraine at the beginning of the book.

The author Bernard Lecache [1895-1968] was a French journalist, son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. In 1927 he founded the League Against Pogroms, which in the following year became the International League Against Antisemitism, and in 1979 the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism. Headed the League against Antisemitism from 1927 until his death in 1968. He also enthusiastically supported the 1917 Russian Revolution and was active in the human rights league. Lecache received broad public support for his efforts to eradicate antisemitism, including from Albert Einstein and Maxim Gorky. In the 1930s he was a member of the Grand Orient de France and founded the Abbe Grégoire office, fighting the rise of Nazism and European antisemitism. In December 1938 he wrote in the newspaper "Droit de Vivre": “It is our mission to organize the moral and cultural siege against Germany and to disperse this nation. It is up to us to start a merciless war”. After his death he was succeeded as president of the organization by Jean-Pierre Bloch, who remained president until 1993.

[10], 258 p. 19 cm. Slight stains on some pages. Good condition.