This was a very informative and interesting book. I don't ever remember hearing in about some of the events that took place during the time of this book. The time period of these events and the loss of life was insightful. For anyone that wants to learn more about the pogroms that led up to the Holocaust this is the book for you to read. The way that the Ukrainian and Polish citizens reacted and their participation in them gives a better understand of how Hitler was able to do what he did. It shows that proproganda can influnece the way that people think and reacted. There is much in history that hasn't been written about except in the academic world and this book is written for everyone to learn from. There was so much information that sometimes my head reeled. To think about everything we have lost because of genocides .

In this depressingly thorough descent into the butchery of Russian revolution era Ukraine and Poland, Jeffrey Veidlinger's In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust documents and contextualizes the turmoil and savagery of civil war as various everyday people aided and abetted by various armed factions turned on their Jewish neighbors to rob, destroy, assault, and murder them.

Already, during World War I, the Pale of Jewish Settlement was a battle ground between the Tsars Russian forces and the German Empire. Some towns and villages traded hands multiple times with Russians often more savage and destructive, looting and killing and destroying as they passed through.

With this recent history, Veidlinger begins and then moves chronologically through the hundreds of separate incidents in the Ukraine and Poland with a particular focus on the larger pogroms. At the center of many of the pogroms and latter violence against Jews is the conflating of bolshevism and Judaism. Unfortunately a still a common trope of anti-semitism. Veidlinger derives much of the narrative through the voices of the surviving victims, trial records and official orders.

In talking to "The Times of Israel" Veidlinger spoke to the weight of writing this book. "It’s terrifying and horrifying... It takes a toll on you to write that testimony. I’m sure it takes a toll on the reader… It was difficult for me to hear, and probably difficult for them to tell.”*

A book that highlights the importance of historical research, the need to look back on past events and both acknowledge what has occurred and hold the perpetrators accountable.

* Rich Tenorio. "20 years before the Holocaust, pogroms killed 100,000 Jews – then were forgotten." The Times of Israel 21 December 2021, 3:58 am https://www.timesofisrael.com/20-year...

A most welcome look into the earliest days of the holocaust. In the last few years, an innumerable amount of books have been published about the holocaust and nearly all of them focus around "Auschwitz". While an important topic of study, it seems more like a selling point to have something about the death camps in the title or subheading.
Finally, a book is released that provides some new insights into the origins of an extremely well-known topic. This book highlights the key moments in European Jewish history at the turn of the twentieth century until the 1920s, a time period known by experts but often overlooked by the historical layman.

Lots of research - lots of detail. No question that this book expanded my understanding of a very dark chapter of our history. This certainly makes a strong case for how events in Eastern Europe in the late teens/early 20s set the stage for the Holocaust that followed. Not exactly fun to read, but well worth the time.