The reasons for and aims of social-political violence are among the most baffling phenomena, resisting explanation and closure, numerous efforts notwithstanding. One can find long lists of publications about the nature of social violence and its concrete historical cases in the book of William W. Hagen about the pogroms and anti-Jewish violence on historically Polish territories in the years 1914–1920. Professor Hagen thought through many theories and approaches in his effort to understand the series of eruptions of ethnic violence directed against Jewish populations during World War I and the first period of Polish state independence. He is very deliberate in his use of generalizations and sources, geographic and ethnic characteristics, as well as moral judgements. It is obvious right from the beginning pages of his book that we are dealing with a work of historical and intellectual depth and expertise accumulated over years of thinking and researching. If it is possible to write a final book on the subject of spasms of hatred and destruction, Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920 constitutes such an achievement. All future texts on the twentieth-century history of Poland will have to consider it very carefully.

The book describes and analyzes the six years of anti-Jewish violence on the lands that used to historically belong to Poland and were the homeland of the majority of European Jews. The author starts with theoretical and historical chapters that review and discuss the work done by his predecessors and situate the events in their political and historical context; later in the book he refers to these chapters, letting the reader dwell on the descriptions of events without major interruptions. The brisk narration moves in a chronological manner within separate parts of ex-Polish lands; Part I speaks of 1914–16 in West Galicia, then moves to the November 1918 pogroms there and in Lwów. Part II also ends with 1918 pogroms accompanying the coming of state independence, but in the Russian part of Poland. Part III traces the eastward progress of pogroms with the Polish advances in the war against Russia. A short conclusion completes more than five hundred pages of thoroughly documented mayhem and human tragedy.

The initial “Theoretical Footnote” convincingly explains the author's rejection of labels and categories that usually pre-format historical vision of events of such magnitude. Hagen opts for history from below, and, so to say, from the sides. We hear the voices of the victims and perpetrators—their words are quoted whenever available; we look at the official and informal reactions of authorities; we read discussions of journalists and propagandists; we see Jewish, Austrian, Russian, and Polish points of view, justifications and interpretations. The thorough documentation unfolds stages of violence, with attention to telling detail, which, since the topic is violence, is often unbearable. But it makes the reader understand the mechanism of ethnic hatred and see its irreversible devastation.

It is rare to read a work discussing 1918 and the period of the rebirth of Polish statehood that has as its focus the story of ethnic brutality, demoralization, hunger, murder, and rape. Without sensationally dwelling on violence, it is a realistic, sober presentation of the times of trouble. The book is both daring and modest. Its author displays a rare kind of sensitivity, an intimate knowledge of the period and places, and a capacity to apply to history his ethnographic, anthropological, and psychoanalytical insights. He brings to the topic all of this and more, including deep knowledge of the new studies on anti-Jewish violence in Poland. In his theoretical chapter he debates the works of several authors, including books by Alina Cała and Joanna Tokarska-Bakir. Indeed, the latest work of this last author, published at the same time as Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920 appeared, corresponds with the methods and thoughtfulness of Professor Hagen. I have in mind the two-volume opus by Joanna Tokarska-Bakir on the Kielce pogrom from 1946 (Pod klątwą. Społeczny portret pogromu kieleckiego, 2018). The city of Kielce is also mentioned in Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1914–1920, as the anti-Jewish riots erupted there on November 11 and 12, 1918. Both authors look closely at the mechanisms of violence and at the ways in which they were and are interpreted and absorbed. What we see in this new scholarship is the continuity in how Jews are located in Polish culture.