Chronicling a Dead City: The Fate of the Dubovo Shtetl in 1919

Podbrodz Lecture Supported by the Podbrodzer Progressive Benevolent Association. This lecture was established to honor the Jewish Community of Podbrodz, now named Padbrade. Admission: $10 YIVO members: $7

In this talk, Elissa Bemporad (Queens College, CUNY) examines the history and fate of the Ukrainian shtetl of Dubovo during the Russian Civil War (1919-21). Drawing on archival and published sources, Bemporad discusses the pogroms that led to the “death of the shtetl” and traces Dubovo’s afterlife in literature and historical accounts. A micro study of one shtetl, Dubovo in 1919 sheds light on future conditions for Soviet Jewry and aspects of the Holocaust in Ukraine. 

About the Speaker

Elissa Bemporad is associate professor of history and the Jerry and William Ungar Chair in Eastern European Jewish history and the Holocaust at Hunter College (CUNY). Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union. 

Bemporad is the author of Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk, 1917-1939 (Indiana University Press). Her new book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets, which will be published by Oxford University Press, is a social history of the two greatest legacies of Tsarist anti-Semitism, the pogroms and the blood libel accusations, from 1917 to the 1970s. Together with Joyce Warren, she is co-editing the forthcoming volume Women and Genocide (Indiana University Press) about the multifaceted roles played by women in different genocidal contexts during the twentieth century.