The Kishinev Pogrom, 1903

The New York Times described the first Kishinev pogrom:

The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews," was taken- up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.

The razzia was preceded by rumors that a Christian girl that died in the Jewish hospital had been sacrificed for ritual purposes. The pogrom was spontaneous (it was not organized by the Czarist police, as reported) and was followed by hundreds of smaller act of violence against Jews. The Kishinev pogrom started the flight of the Jewish masses to the West, mainly to the United States.

From a historical point of view, Jewish life in Ukraine (Bessarabia) was unsustainable,  and those who escaped saved their lives and posterity. About the same time, there had been blood libels also in Hungary (Tiszaeszlar) but the Hungarian Jewish community hired lawyers and politicians and succeeded in suffocating the pogroms and punishing the criminals. 110 years after one can wonder if was that good for the Hungarian Jewry?