Philip S. Bernstein Lecture
In the Midst of Pogrom Violence: Jewish Women as Victims, Chroniclers, and Survivors
Wednesday, March 4, 2026 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Rush Rhees Library, Hawkins-Carlson Room
Overview
This talk will focus on the genocidal violence against the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe unleashed during the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921. By exploring the different roles that Jewish women came to play in the midst of these pogroms, the talk will highlight some continuities between this wave of anti-Jewish violence and the events that occurred in the same regions of Eastern Europe some twenty years later, during the Holocaust.
About the Speaker
Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and the Graduate Center - CUNY. She is a two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Bemporad is the author of three monographs, including Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019), and the editor of several volumes, including, most recently, Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021) and The Destruction of Dubova: Chronicle of a Dead City (Bloomsbury 2025). Her work has appeared in different languages, including French, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, and Russian.
Sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, the Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester.