I’m from the global South, so I don’t know minute details in the western history that well. Yes, this post should have gone under a political community, but since I’m interested in the history, I believe that this is the right place to post them.
I am interested in this part of the article:
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, this town’s population was 80 percent Jewish at the start of the twentieth century. In contrast, at the start of World War II, only 26 percent of the town was Jewish, after Jews fled or were imprisoned and killed in gulags. Devastatingly, the remainder of the Jewish population was killed in one mass slaughter by the Nazis in 1942.
However, from this Wikipedia page:
…in the 1930s the Jews were underrepresented in the Gulag population
Not just that, but according to this page mentions how most of the pogroms were carried out by the ASFR army and UNA, although the Green and Red army were also complicit to some extent.
Anything else I should be looking out for?
Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to really help your exact question. However, it should be noted that the Russian Civil War displaced and killed a lot of people, and the Russian Empire had problems with pogroms against Jews. It’s not inconceivable that many of those towns were depopulated as a direct consequence of not just the Russian Civil War, but also the actions of the USSR before WW2.
My first thought at the mentioning of the underrepresentaion of Jews in gulags was questioning how many had simply been killed outright instead of imprisoned, or simply fled the town/country before then. I’d look into the numbers of Jewish people who fled the USSR after 1900 to get a clearer picture.
Overall, the history seems pretty accurate to my knowledge, but again, I’m not an expert by any means!
