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To the Editor:
Jews have been victims of pogroms for hundreds of years. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they fled Eastern Europe and Russia to escape persecution.
Millions came to America, many arriving in our city.
Three New Yorkers affected by pogroms had major impacts on American life. Emma Lazarus met Jewish immigrants who were subject to Russian pogroms. This inspired her to write the sonnet, “The New Colossus."
It’s inscribed on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”).
Israel Beilin was born in Tyumen, Siberia. His family fled Russia in 1893 to escape pogroms in the Jewish village of Tolochin.
Beilin’s only memory in Russia was, "lying on a blanket by the side of a road, watching his house burn to the ground.” The family settled on the Lower East Side.
Israel Beilin became Irving Berlin, one of America’s greatest songwriters.
Jerome Rabinowitz was born on the Lower East Side. His parents were Eastern European Jews who were part of the massive migration that left Russia and Poland after 1880.
Jerome Rabinowitz became Jerome Robbins, legendary dancer, choreographer and director. After a visit to Eastern Europe where he was unable to find his ancestral home, destroyed in part by pogroms, Robbins became the driving force behind the creation of Fiddler on the Roof.
The families depicted in the musical came from the same pre-World War I Eastern Europe of his ancestors. Fiddler ends with a pogrom by Russian soldiers that drove the Jews out of their fictional village of Anatevka.
What a bitter irony it is that in the occupied West Bank, Jewish settlers with the complicity of the IDF and the State of Israel have carried out violent, organized mob attacks against Palestinians. U.S. and foreign journalists, American and Israeli peace activists and even European diplomats and Congressman Ro Khanna have also been assaulted or threatened.
These attacks have caused injuries, killings, arson, the destruction of homes, businesses, olive fields, livestock, crops and religious sites, as well as the expulsion of Palestinians from their towns and villages.
Human rights organizations, reporters and scholars have called these attacks pogroms.
Howard Elterman
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