Nahum Gergel (April 4, 1887 – November 18, 1931) was a Jewish rights activist, humanitarian, sociologist, and author in
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...
. Nahum Gergel is best known for his thorough statistical studies of
anti-Jewish
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
atrocities (
pogroms) that took place in
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
in 1918–1921.
Gergel received a traditional
Jewish education
Jewish education ( he, חינוך, ''Chinuch'') is the transmission of the tenets, principles, and religious laws of Judaism. Known as the "people of the book", Jews value education, and the value of education is strongly embedded in Jewish cu ...
, then studied law in
Kiev. In 1914 he graduated from
Kiev University
Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...
and moved to
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
where he became active politically, as a Jewish rights activist and as a humanitarian. He lived in Russia, Ukraine, and eventually Germany where he emigrated in 1921. Gergel died at the age of 44 of a sudden
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...
, and was buried in the
Weißensee cemetery Weißensee (German: ''white lake'') may refer to:
Places
* Weissensee (Berlin), a district of Berlin
*Weißensee, Thuringia, a town in Thuringia, Germany
* Weissensee, Austria, a municipality in Carinthia, Austria
* Weissensee (Carinthia), a lake i ...
in Berlin in 1931. His family then moved back to Ukraine prior to Hitler’s ascent to power.
Jewish aid organizations
In January 1915 Gergel joined the EKOPO (Jewish Committee for the Aid of War Victims), and in September 1915 he was elected its chairman. Starting September 1916 Gergel worked in the EKOPO
Central Committee in
Petrograd. In May 1918 he was elected President of EKOPO, and remained its leader till 1921 when he left Russia for Germany.
During this period Gergel also worked in the governing board of
ORT (Obshchestvo Ruchnogo Truda - Society for the Manual Labor - a well-known Jewish international philanthropy and education-promoting society). In July 1920 - 1921 he was elected Chairman of IDGESKOM (Jewish People's Relief Committee). During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
Gergel formed a group of activists that fought against accusations of Jews being German spies. He organized resettlement to Poltava for thousands of Jewish families that were deported by the
Russian Government from the near-front Kurland and Kovno regions.
Political Parties
In his youth Gergel participated in
The Bund
The Bund or Waitan (, Shanghainese romanization: ''Nga3thae1'', , ) is a waterfront area and a protected historical district in central Shanghai. The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road (East Zhongshan Road No.1) within the former Shan ...
, later he joined the
Zionist Socialist Workers Party
Zionist-Socialist Workers Party (russian: Сионистско-социалистическая рабочая партия), often referred to simply as Zionist-Socialists or S.S. by their Russian initials, was a Jewish territorialist and social ...
(ZSWP) and was elected to its Central Committee. After the February
1917 Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of governm ...
in Russia, Gergel was elected a ZSWP’s representative in the
Petrograd Soviet
The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (russian: Петроградский совет рабочих и солдатских депутатов, ''Petrogradskiy soviet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov'') was a city council of P ...
of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. After the union of ZSWP and JSWP (
Jewish Socialist Workers Party), Gergel became a member of the new party Central Committee and soon was elected to that party’s All-Russia Committee.
Jewish Ministry of Ukraine
In early 1918 Gergel was appointed chairman of the bureau of the Jewish Ministry of Ukraine. After the
Hetman
( uk, гетьман, translit=het'man) is a political title from Central and Eastern Europe, historically assigned to military commanders.
Used by the Czechs in Bohemia since the 15th century. It was the title of the second-highest military co ...
Skoropadskyi’s coup in April 1918, Gergel became effectively the head of the Jewish Ministry of Ukraine.
Anti-Jewish Pogroms
![N](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/N.Gergel_Article_-_Page_248.jpg)
Severe anti-Jewish pogroms erupted in 1918–1921 in Ukraine; in this period Gergel was an active member of the Pogrom Victims Aid Committee. At the same time he worked as a chief of the Pogrom Relief Department in the People’s Security Commissariat. In December 1919, Gergel was appointed representative of the Red Cross’ Pogrom Aid Committee where he worked until the
Soviet Government
The Government of the Soviet Union ( rus, Прави́тельство СССР, p=prɐˈvʲitʲɪlʲstvə ɛs ɛs ɛs ˈɛr, r=Pravítelstvo SSSR, lang=no), formally the All-Union Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, commonly ab ...
liquidated the Committee in May 1920. At the same time as he was working in different pogrom aid organizations, Gergel tirelessly collected materials and
statistical data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...
on anti-Jewish pogroms. Results of this work were later published in Europe.
Gergel’s study of pogroms is very often quoted as the proof that the
Ukrainian National Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was a country in Eastern Europe that existed between 1917 and 1920. It was declared following the February Revolution in Russia by the First Universal. In March 1 ...
army, led by
Symon Petliura
Symon Vasylyovych Petliura ( uk, Си́мон Васи́льович Петлю́ра; – May 25, 1926) was a Ukrainian politician and journalist. He became the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army and the President of the Ukrainian Peop ...
, incited and took part in pogroms.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repres ...
in the early text of his book “Two Hundred Years Together” says that "According to Nahum Gergel's 1951 study of the pogroms in Ukraine, out of an estimated 887 mass pogroms, about 40% were perpetrated by the Ukrainian forces led by Symon Petliura". In the later editions of the book Solzhenitsyn replaces reference to Gergel by words "Jewish sources", so do some other authors who quote Gergel's figures and statistical analysis without mentioning his name - for example G. Kostyrchenko in his "Stalin's Secret Policy. Power And Antisemitism.". It’s worth noting that the study referred to by Solzhenitsyn was carried out by Gergel in 1918-early 1920-s, and was first published in 1928 in Berlin in Yiddish. Gergel's figures on the pogrom, which are generally considered conservative, are based on the testimony of witnesses and newspaper reports collected by the Mizrakh-Yiddish Historische Archiv (Mizrahi Jewish Historical Archives), which was first based in Kiev, then Berlin and later New York. The English version of Gergel's article was published in 1951 in the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science titled "The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918-1921"
Emigration to Germany: humanitarian activities
At the close of 1921 Gergel arrived in Berlin where he continued his diverse political and activist work. He started with forming the OZE (“Jewish Health Society”) Committee Abroad (together with Kreinin and other activists). In 1922 he was elected to the Committee Secretariat and assumed the role of editor of “OZE Bulletin”. At this time Gergel worked in Mizrakh-Yiddish Historische Archiv where he stored all materials on anti-Jewish pogroms he had collected. In 1923 Gergel was elected the Secretary General of
ORT. In 1925 he visited the United States as an OZE delegate. In 1926 Gergel was appointed as the
JDC (stands for “American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee”) expert on the Russian Jewish affairs.
Gergel pioneered the inception of ''Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye'' (1932–1966, the first comprehensive encyclopedia in the Yiddish language). This project was the reason for his next trip to the US.
Work in YIVO–Institute for Jewish Studies
Gergel was one of the founders and an active member of Institute for the Jewish Studies (
YIVO
YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...
) in Berlin. At the YIVO conference in Vilna in October 1929 he was elected a member of the YIVO Governing Board. He worked as an economics-statistics section editor and contributed to the “YIVO Bleter” journal. Gergel's socio-economical study of Russian Jews in the early Soviet era was published in his book "On the Situation Of Jews In Russia" in Yiddish (Warsaw, 1929).
Publications and Unpublished Work
Gergel collected more material than he was able to publish during his short life. His large monograph, “The Jewish Ministry under Getman” (“Das Judische Ministerium Unter Getman”), was never published.
[Biographical Dictionary of Modern Yiddish Literature Vol.2 p. 316-318]
* Book in Yiddish: Gergel, N. “Di Lage fun di Yidn in Rusland”, 259 p., Warsaw, 1929.
* Article in English: Gergel, N. “The Pogroms in the Ukraine In 1918–1921”, YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, New York, 1951, p. 237-252. (This is English translation of the article in Yiddish originally published in 1928 in Shriftn far Ekonomik un Statistik).
* Article in Yiddish: “Jews in the Communist Party and the Communist International” (“Shriftn far Economisch und Statistisch” 1928).
* Multiple articles in Yiddish in YIVO Bleter: (ex.: 1931, p. 62-70)
* Several important articles by Gergel were published in the New York paper “Zukunft” (“The Future”) in 1920s, and early 1930s.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gergel, Nahum
1931 deaths
1887 births
People from Cherkasy Oblast
20th-century Ukrainian Jews
History of YIVO
Jewish activists
Jewish Socialist Workers Party politicians
Yiddish-language writers
Soviet emigrants to Germany