Astashkevich

This is a groundbreaking study of an important and neglected topic. Between 1917 and 1921, rape was used as a strategic weapon in the genocidal anti-Jewish violence—the pogroms—that erupted in Ukraine. During this period, at least 100,000 Jews died and unknown numbers of Jewish women were raped. The book is based on the in-depth study of the scores of survivor narratives that have been all but forgotten for almost a century. It analyzes how the victimized Jewish communities experienced trauma, how they expressed it, the motives of the perpetrators, and the part played by rape in furthering the pogroms’ objectives.