In this impressively researched and convincingly argued book, historian William Hagen has described and analyzed in grim detail the orgy of anti-Jewish violence that took place during and immediately after World War I in the territories that became the Republic of Poland. Based on a close reading of mountains of Jewish testimonies, Polish governmental inquiries and reports, Polish army intelligence, trial testimony, as well as newspaper accounts and memoirs, Hagen's book reveals the depths of animosity of Polish Christians against Jews, their self-righteous anger as well as their fantasies of removing the Jews from Poland altogether. In all, there were 279 anti-Jewish riots in historical Polish lands, leading to the deaths of about five hundred Jews, plus murderous anti-Jewish violence in the territories swept up by the Russian Civil War, leading to the death of some fifty thousand Jews according to Hagen's estimate. This violence was carried out by a wide array of actors, primarily Polish peasants and Polish soldiers—many of them in bands of irregular forces headed by warlords, others in various Polish armies, including Haller's army and Piłsudski's forces. Their commanding officers either could not constrain these soldiers or they tacitly agreed with the goals of the plundering, raping, and murdering soldiers under their command.

Hagen's central argument is that this antisemitic violence did not derive from the agitation of antisemitic political leaders, although certainly such parties as the Endeks (National Democrats) of Roman Dmowski railed against the Jews incessantly. Rather, the violence derived from deep-seated anti-Jewish views, derived in part from Christian animosity against the Jews and Judaism but also from the long-held view that Jews unfairly held economic power. War-time food shortages only exacerbated the belief that Jews had secret access to food and other resources. At the end of the war, especially in Galicia but also in Congress Poland, anti-Jewish violence erupted, the goal of which was to plunder the Jews, to steal from them imagined vast stores of food that Jews had allegedly stolen from Christians. Plunder led to murder as peasants and townspeople attacked Jews. At the end of the war, those who already hated the Jews for traditional economic and religious reasons added two new fears. Many Christians now felt that Jews opposed the creation of the Polish state, attacked it, and worked with its enemies to destroy it. Moreover, those who hated the Jews now saw them as Bolsheviks, allied with the Russian Bolsheviks to destroy Poland. The fact that Poland was engaged in a war with Bolshevik Russia for control of territory outside “ethnographic Poland”—that is, territories in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine that Poland wanted—only exacerbated Christian fears of Jews as Bolsheviks. Christian Poles feared that Bolshevik Russia would destroy Polish Christianity and Poland itself. The only solution was to attack the Jews. Such views were widespread, especially among soldiers, who committed most of the antisemitic violence between 1918 and 1920. Indeed, Hagen notes, where the fighting against the Russian Bolsheviks was the most difficult or where Bolshevik occupation of Polish territory lasted longest, attacks against Jews as Bolsheviks was the most murderous.

In addition to dealing with how anti-Jewish aggressors felt about their Jewish victims, Hagen emphasizes the theatricality, the carnivalesque spectacle of anti-Jewish violence. Often those who perpetrated the violence staged mock public trials in the main squares of towns, then ritually whipped Jews on their bare buttocks while they lay across benches in public display. They also wanted to humiliate Jews and destroy symbols of what they regarded as Jewish magical power, regularly (and brutally) cutting off the beards of religious Jewish men, desecrating Jewish ritual objects, raping women, burning Jews inside synagogues or other buildings, and destroying signs in Hebrew letters. Perpetrators believed that Jews deserved the violence unleashed against them, and they felt no remorse. They even believed they had permission from the authorities to plunder, rape, and murder Jews, and that their actions would right the wrongs committed by the Jews, thus saving Poland from harm.

Hagen's book makes for depressing reading. Clearly, he is upset with the Polish Christians who justified their violence and with Polish intellectual and political leaders who may have opposed violence but nevertheless blamed the Jews for antagonizing the Poles. Polish nationalist leaders thus were upset with the Zionists, who, during the pogrom in Lwów/Lemberg in November 1918, declared their neutrality between the Polish and Ukrainian forces battling to control the city. Polish nationalists regarded such Zionist neutrality as anti-Polish, even if many Polish nationalists wanted nothing more than that all Jews should go to Palestine. Many Polish political leaders also downplayed the antisemitic aspect of anti-Jewish violence, attributing it to soldierly “pranks” or the chaos of war.

Unfortunately, Hagen overwhelms the reader with too much detail about all the anti-Jewish violence, even if he regularly reminds his readers about the important issues. He presumably provides so much detail because he wants to impress his readers with the extent of Polish Christian animosity against Jews and remind Poles that they harbored fantasies of getting rid of the Jews altogether. Nevertheless, the book would have been better if shorter. It is good, though, that he is careful not to contrast Jews and Poles, preferring the more accurate term “Polish Christians.” I would also have preferred if he did not call the organized Jewish community the Israelite or Jewish commune, a term that makes no sense to most readers. Minor criticisms aside, Hagen has written a very important book about antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence in Poland.