Sunday, May 11: House No. 13
The pogrom topography is about a mile long, concentrated in a space that on a map looks a bit like a narrow island, bordered by the River Byck, a poor area that in 1941 was at the heart of the Jewish ghetto. The pogrom lasted for two days during Easter 1903. Houses were smashed, property destroyed, women raped and children slaughtered by pogromschiki, local rioters, often quite young. Forty-nine people were killed, and hundreds injured and left homeless, as the police stood by without intervening. The event was reported internationally, including in the New York Times. The event is also commemorated on Spring and Slaughter, a digital installation created by Jack Saul.
At the time the Kishinev represented an incident of unprecedented violence and persecution that became a turning point in Jewish history. This house, the most famous of the sites of the pogrom attacks, gave Vladimir Korolenko the title of his 1904 article: House No. 13: An Episode in the Massacre of Kishinieff. The Russian-language cover is archived by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Eight Jewish families were said to have dwelled in House No. 13, and the compound included a grocery store.