CLOTH AND MEMORY

Pogrom

63" x 31" x 8" 

Mixed media

Detail. Click to enlarge.

I remember my grandmother talking about “hiding in the fields from the Cossacks.” I wish I had asked her more questions. Maybe I did and she chose not to answer.

Pogrom is a Russian word; it means to demolish violently. Between 1881-1884, extensive anti-Jewish riots swept through Ukraine and southern Russia after Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. 

During the civil war that followed the 1917 Bol-shevik Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists, Polish officials, and Red Army soldiers — often with police and government encouragement — murdered, raped, and looted, killing tens of thousands of Jews between 1918 and 1920. And, of course, it didn’t end there…