In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true.

Drawing upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers, and governmental officials, he explains how so many different groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was an acceptable response to their various problems.

Great Minds Think Alike: The Persistence of Jewish Stereotypes in Western Thought
From Moses the lawgiver to Madoff the shyster, Jews have figured prominently in European and American myth for some two thousand years. Regardless of whether it is out of admiration for their contributions to modern civilization or as a warning about imagined Jewish conspiracies, stereotypes of Jews have occupied some of the most influential minds of the last two centuries. Some have lauded them as God’s Chosen People, Hollywood moguls, Nobel Laureates, intellectual geniuses, and highly accomplished doctors, lawyers, and professionals. At the same time stereotypes of Jews have been feared and despised as imagined worshippers of the Anti-Christ, political conspirators, financial manipulators, child murderers, and threats to racial purity.
This talk looks at how positive and negative stereotypes and misconceptions about Jews influenced some major writers and artists of the past, including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, and Mark Twain.

Antisemitism and the College Campus
Based on his experiences running two of the largest Jewish Studies college programs in the country, as well as his time as Vice-President of the Association for Jewish Studies and Chair of the Academic Council of the Center for Jewish History, Professor Veidlinger reflects on the current state of Jewish life and antisemitism on college campuses.

Voices from the Shtetl
In this presentation, featuring video of Yiddish-language survivor testimonies he recorded in Ukraine, Professor Veidlinger shares powerful stories about retaining faith and identity in the harshest of circumstances, about surviving the Holocaust and Communism, and about rebuilding life in the aftermath of tragedy.

Tell me About your Life
Based on his TedX Talk, Professor Veidlinger shares some of the wisdom he has learned from the elderly folks he interviewed during ten years of oral history research. The talk gives practical advice on the methods and benefits of listening to and recording life stories and encourages individuals to conduct their own oral histories with family members, to listen, to learn, and to try to understand what matters most to those they love.

Read about Jeffrey Veidlinger’s interview with “The Israel Times”.

Praise for In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

“The mass killings of Jews from 1918 to 1921 are a bridge between local pogroms and the extermination of the Holocaust. No history of that Jewish catastrophe comes close to the virtuosity of research, clarity of prose, and power of analysis of this extraordinary book. As the horror of events yields to empathetic understanding, the reader is grateful to Veidlinger for reminding us what history can do.”