Summary
The pogrom in the Moldovan city of Kishinev during the Russian Easter festival on April 6 and 7, 1903, whose unprecedented worldwide coverage, in Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, swept a new urgency over the Zionist movement and pushed Herzl toward a foreseeable refuge for Eastern European Jews (PDF p.121, p.129).
Details
- Jewish passivity at Kishinev was loudly condemned, most memorably by Haim Nahman Bialik in “The City of Slaughter”, and by Franz Oppenheimer in his January 1906 speech Alte und Neue Makkabäer, which contrasted Kishinev’s victims with the self-defending victims of the 1905-1906 wave of 657 pogroms (PDF p.121-122).
- Oppenheimer pressed Herzl on May 25, 1903: “Kishinev drives my blood into my forehead twenty times a day. Allow me therefore to inquire into the results of your February expedition.” (PDF p.122).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer, Theodor Herzl