1905 was a time of major Pogram activity in the area Grandpa live - not the town itself as far as I can make out, but the larger area. (There was a whole wave of Pograms from 1903 to 1906, but in that particular area it peaked in 1905). I admit this Wikipedia stuff, not serious reseach
Grandpa was definitely a member of a Jewish Bund back home. Lots of people in Newark who would have known said so. And one of the big things the Jewish Bunds did at that time was fight back against Pograms.
My Grandfather was illiterate and not very articulate. The only language he spoke was Yiddish, and according to my Father he did not speak Yiddish iwell. He was 21 9n 1905. So it seems that taking part in fighting was a likely role for him in the Bund. Not the only possible one, certainly likely. So at the very least I'm going to guess that it was more likely than not that he was part of a group of men who fought back against those taking park in pograms . Very like at the the time those carrying out the Pograms were Cossacks (Cossacks were give the hard dirty jobs, and Pograms in areas where Jews fought back would have been a hard dirty job.)
Cossacks being killed in those fights also seems likely. Lipowitz personally killing one of them in such a fight is not implausible, though I admit he may have been exaggerating. One point against exaggeration is that he was not a talker. The way my Father told it, the conversation in Yiddish went something along these lines.
"So why did you come to American Papa. Was it for a better life?"
"Nah"
Shocked pause by young Shay Lipow, who had been taught the cliche in school that that was why everybody came. "So why'd you come"
"Had to. Killed a Cossack."
To tell you the truth I'd always been suspicious of the family story. Sounded overly romantic, like having a Pirate ancestor. But having a real name and a date and a city of origin let me do at least some very crude research and makes it much more plausible. At some point I'll look up the public records to get a complete list of the Pograms of 1905. Also I'm pretty sure there are records out there about the Jewish Bunds. I may never be able to find out the paricular incident, but I can probably find out which Bund Grandpa was likely to have been a member of. I'm told that these days there are even partial membership records available of some of the old Bunds, I don't know where they would come from. Old intelligence files, long since declassified and now on-line perhaps?
A side note about 1905: it seems since almost all of the Bunds were socialist at the time and were (along with the Bolsheviks) targets of the government, that the Bunds and the Bolsheviks were often allies and sometimes worked quite closely together.
On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 6:50 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Chris is quite active on Facebook, but I do not know how to obtain email
> from that source.
>
> As to historical research, it is probably a lost cause unless it was a part
> of a larger event, like a pogrom. Those things were typically orchestrated
> by the Okhrana (tsarist security service) by spreading rumors of Jewish
> attacks on Christians, so killing of a Cossack would certainly be
> publicized in the local press. However, 1905 was a revolutionary period in
> Russian history, and there was a lot of violence at that time. A single
> incident might have been simply drowned by many other similar incidents.
> It is also possible that the killing story was manufactured either by
> tsarist agents to stir up trouble, or by your Grandpa to get an asylum. I
> lived in an expat community for a while, and stories like that were told
> quite often, but for someone familiar with the regions they did not pass
> the smell test.
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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