Based on memoirs, the press, and secret police reports from the archives and libraries of Kyiv, Lviv, Vilnius, Jerusalem, Washington D.C., and New York City, this talk explores the afterlife of one of the most extreme manifestations of tsarist antisemitism— the blood libel—in the Soviet Union, from the Revolution of 1917 to the early 1960s.

By tracing the persistence and permutation of the blood libel in the Soviet Union throughout the interwar period and into the postwar period, the talk sheds new light on the interplay between official and popular antisemitism, as well as on on the ever-changing and at times ambivalent relationship between the state and the Jewish minority group in modern times.

Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Jerry and William Ungar Chair in Eastern European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and the Graduate Center - CUNY.

Monday, August 2, 8 pm Israel time / 6 pm London time / 1 pm EST

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Based on memoirs, the press, and secret police reports from the archives and libraries of Kyiv, Lviv, Vilnius, Jerusalem, Washington D.C., and New York City, this talk explores the afterlife of one of the most extreme manifestations of tsarist antisemitism— the blood libel—in the Soviet Union, from the Revolution of 1917 to the early 1960s.

By tracing the persistence and permutation of the blood libel in the Soviet Union throughout the interwar period and into the postwar period, the talk sheds new light on the interplay between official and popular antisemitism, as well as on on the ever-changing and at times ambivalent relationship between the state and the Jewish minority group in modern times.

Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Jerry and William Ungar Chair in Eastern European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and the Graduate Center - CUNY.

Monday, August 2, 8 pm Israel time / 6 pm London time / 1 pm EST

‍