Jewish history over the past two millennia is rife with episodes of trauma and tragedy. Nearly every century, it seems, has seen Jews in various parts of the world massacred or expelled, forcibly converted, or oppressed.
The litany of horrors is so long, the suffering so unimaginable, that it is perhaps inevitable that our collective memory would fail to contain it all.
And yet, if we truly believe that every person is akin to a world unto himself, then we owe it to those who were murdered because they were Jews to salvage as much as we can about what befell them.
One such largely forgotten instance, which I came across recently while doing some research, was a pogrom against Jews that was carried out just over a century ago in a place one would never expect – Mongolia.
Wedged between Russia and China in a far-off and inhospitable region, Mongolia does not have much of a Jewish past to speak of.
The first Jews believed to have settled in Mongolia were merchants from Siberia, who moved there some time in the 19th century.
In 1917, when the Russian civil war erupted after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the collapse of the provisional government that replaced him, a few hundred Jews fled Russia and settled in Mongolia’s capital, Urga, now called Ulaanbaatar. But the bloodshed in Russia, where the Bolsheviks and their White Russian foes waged a brutal struggle for power, caught up with them shortly thereafter.
The main culprit in this case was an eccentric and rather bizarre figure named Baron Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, whose justly earned nickname was “the Mad Baron.”
Born in Graz, Austria, he was brought up in Estonia and fought in the Cossack army in World War I. At some point he became a Buddhist, but that didn’t dampen his twisted lust for blood and love of violence.
A fanatical monarchist, he despised Communism and dreamed of restoring the Mongol empire and marching on Moscow.
“In the history of the modern world,” writes author James Palmer in The Bloody White Baron, a chilling biography of Ungern, “there have been few characters more sadistic, sinister, and deeply demented.”
Indeed, one of Ungern’s deepest passions was his hatred of Jews, whom he once described as a “terrible plague” and “parasites who corrupt the world.” He was a fanatical antisemite who insisted that Jews had created Communism 3,000 years ago in Babylonia.
During the Russian Civil War, Ungern formed the White Russians’ Asiatic Cavalry Division and ruled parts of Siberia like a wild-eyed warlord, stealing supplies from trains and imposing his will with an iron fist.
During a recruitment effort he oversaw, “All men with physical defects were shot, until only the able-bodied remained. He killed all Jews, regardless of age, sex, or ability,” notes journalist Christopher Othen, who wrote an in-depth article about Ungern.
Crossing into Mongolia
STARTING IN October 1920, Ungern crossed the border into Mongolia and launched a series of attempts to capture Urga, home to 70,000 people and occupied at the time by the Chinese, but he was repeatedly beaten back.
In late January 1921, Ungern and his troops again attacked Urga, breaking through its defenses and capturing the city on February 4. Seeing that victory was at hand, Ungern gave his men three days to rape and pillage, which they readily did.
After the three days of looting, Ungern called for a halt to the harassment of civilians, except for the Jews, because, he said, “in my opinion, the Jews are not protected by any law.”
In his orders to his men, Ungern was unequivocal, issuing instructions that would have made Haman the Agagite proud, telling them that “neither men, nor women, nor their seed should remain.”
Palmer writes that “Jews were hunted on horseback through the streets of Urga, lynched in their homes, tortured for amusement.”
A Russian who arrived in Urga a few days later described finding “dozens of raped and mutilated women, slaughtered children, the bodies of old men.”
No one knows for sure how many Jews were murdered in Urga, though Dmitri Pershin, a White Russian novelist and historian who lived in the city, said that at least 50 had been killed.
Pershin himself hid a Jewish dentist named Gauer and his family in his basement, and somehow persuaded Ungern’s troops who came to search his house to forgo conducting a thorough check. Subsequently, he succeeded in spiriting them out of Urga to safety.
In another instance, after a Jewish family had been slaughtered, their Mongolian nanny fled with their baby to the Russian consulate in Urga and had the child baptized by an Orthodox priest. Ungern’s troops decided to allow the infant to live, but then slashed the nanny to death with their swords.
Mongolians had no history nor knowledge of antisemitism, and they are said to have been confounded by all the bloodshed, failing to understand why the Jews were being targeted by the Russians.
The Mongolian prince Togtokh even sought to give refuge to several Jews in his compound.
Accounts differ as to what happened next and why, but in the end the Jews he harbored were taken out and killed, their bodies left to rot in the street.
The pogrom effectively destroyed Mongolia’s nascent Jewish community.
SEVERAL MONTHS later, the Russian Red Army invaded Mongolia, and Ungern was captured on August 20, 1921.
On September 15, after a brief show trial in which, ironically, the prosecutor was a Jew named Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, Ungern was found guilty. But he remained unrepentant, even defiant until the end.
After being sentenced to death, Ungern was asked if he had any last words, to which he responded, “I have nothing to say.” That night, he was executed.
Beyond some additional details said to be contained in archival records, not much else is known about the Jews who died during that awful period, or what became of those who somehow managed to survive.
More research needs to be done about this sad chapter, which shows the extent to which the hatred of Jews was shared by Red Communists and White Russians alike.
But it also serves as a poignant, if painful, reminder that even in the farthest reaches of the globe, the safety of Jews has always been fragile, at best, and must never be taken for granted.
The writer was the deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.