This day in history: May 5th: Blame the Jews Day (1881) [View all]

[Behind the Aegis]

Four years of pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia were set in motion on this date in 1881 by mobs of peasants who attacked Jewish stores and homes in the Ukrainian villages of Konsky-rosdor, Popiko, Andreyevka, and the city Orekhov, after Jews were incorrectly blamed for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya on March 13th. Through the spring and summer the rioting would spread to Odessa and other sites, large and small, and after a brief remission, to Warsaw on Christmas Day and to Balta on Easter, 1882, with increasing ferocity and casualties, including many rapes and deaths. “In Belorussia and Lithuania,” according to Jewish Virtual Library, “where the local authorities adopted a firm attitude against the rioters, large fires broke out in many towns and townlets; a considerable number of these were started by the enemies of the Jews.

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The Pogroms were just starting, and eventually end up with the displacing, raping, and murdering of thousands of Jews in Ukraine, Russia, and the Settlement of the Pale. It also was the start of the Jews fleeing to other parts of Europe, which would prove fatal for many, and more fleeing to the US and Canada.