Jewish history in Eastern Europe is the constant fight for survival

If we are going to talk honestly about antisemitism in the old Pale of Settlement - especially Poland and Ukraine - we have to drop the comforting myth that it was just a “Nazi import.” It wasn’t. The Nazis industrialised it, yes. They didn’t invent it.

Let’s start earlier, because this story doesn’t begin in 1939.

    In medieval times, Jews were already the convenient outsiders. Useful, tolerated, and - when things went wrong - blamed. In 1113, in Kyiv, we get one of the earliest recorded outbreaks: a rebellion where Jews were targeted over their economic roles. That pattern sticks. Crusades-era hysteria, blood libels, Black Death paranoia - same script, different century. Someone needs a scapegoat, and Jews are right there.

    Poland complicates the picture. On paper, it was relatively progressive. The Statute of Kalisz in 1264 offered protections that were rare in Europe. That’s not nothing. It’s one of the reasons Jewish life flourished there for centuries. But “relatively tolerant” isn’t the same as safe. Protections didn’t stop periodic violence, expulsions, or the slow drip of hostility that never quite goes away.

Then comes the 17th century, and things get properly catastrophic.

    The Khmelnytsky Uprising isn’t just another episode - it’s a rupture. Cossack forces, peasants, and their allies turn on the Polish-Lithuanian order, and Jews are caught right in the middle, largely because they’re seen as part of that system - leaseholders, tax collectors, intermediaries. That perception proves deadly. Entire communities are wiped out. Tens of thousands killed. The brutality described in contemporary accounts is… not subtle. This wasn’t collateral damage. It was targeted, sustained violence. For Jewish history in Eastern Europe, it leaves a scar that doesn’t fade.

And it doesn’t end there.

    The 18th century brings more of the same. The Koliyivshchyna - including the massacre in Uman - adds another round of killing. Different rebels, same dynamic: social rage plus ethnic targeting equals dead Jews. By this point, it’s not an anomaly - it’s a pattern.

    Fast forward to the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the Russian Empire steps in with its own version of chaos. Pogroms in places like Odessa (1881–82) aren’t isolated incidents; they’re part of a broader environment where violence against Jews is tolerated, often encouraged. Then World War I ends, empires collapse, and Eastern Europe basically turns into a free-for-all. Between 1918 and 1920, Ukraine and parts of Poland see another wave of pogroms. Multiple factions, shifting borders, very little control - and once again, Jews are easy targets.

Then the Holocaust happens. And here’s where people get uncomfortable, because it’s not just Germans in uniforms.

    Nazi Germany designed and ran the extermination system. No ambiguity there. But in places across Poland and Ukraine, there were also local collaborators - some ideological, some opportunistic, some just going along with the new power structure. “Enthusiasts” is a harsh word, but not entirely unfair in certain cases. There were also plenty of locals who resisted, hid Jews, or paid with their lives for it. Both things are true. History rarely gives you clean moral categories.

    After the war, you might expect the hatred to burn out. It doesn’t. The 1946 Kielce pogrom in Poland - after everything that had just happened - is almost surreal. Holocaust survivors return home and get murdered by their neighbours. At that point, you start to realise this isn’t just about wartime conditions. There’s something deeper, older, and more persistent at work.

And this is where memory gets… contested.

    Take the film Aftermath (Pokłosie). It’s a Polish movie that deals - very directly - with the murder of Jews by locals, and the uncomfortable silence that followed. When it came out, it didn’t exactly get a warm national embrace. There was backlash, political pressure, and serious talk in some circles about suppressing or marginalising it because it challenged a preferred narrative - one where Poles are only victims or heroes, never perpetrators. You can see the tension: history versus identity. Not an easy fight.

And then there’s the present, which people prefer to keep separate - as if history politely stopped influencing anything.

    Take how Ukraine votes in the UN on resolutions related to Israel. Its record is overwhelmingly anti-Israel. You can explain that in terms of geopolitics, alliances, strategy. Sure. But it also sits, a bit uncomfortably, in a long historical context where Jewish issues in the region have rarely been treated with uncomplicated sympathy.

    None of this means Poland or Ukraine are uniquely antisemitic places frozen in time. That would be lazy. Both countries have changed enormously, especially in the last few decades. But pretending the past was some kind of multicultural idyll that only went wrong in 1939 - that’s just fiction.

The reality is messier.

    For centuries, Jews in these lands lived, built, argued, prayed, traded, and created extraordinary culture. And at the same time, they lived with the constant possibility that, under the right - or wrong - conditions, their neighbours might turn on them.

That tension - between coexistence and violence - is the real story. Not comfortable. But real.