1903 Chisinau pogrom

115 years ago, on April 19, 1903, on the last day of Jewish Easter and on the first day of Orthodox Easter, a Jewish pogrom began in Chisinau, one of the largest in the history of the Russian Empire. It continued for two days. During the pogrom, 49 people were killed, including 4 non-Jews, 586 were injured. More than 1,500 houses were also destroyed (more than a third of all households in Chisinau). The pogrom was stopped only with the involvement of troops.

About three hundred pogromists were put on trial. Some of them were sentenced to various terms of hard labor and imprisonment, and some were acquitted.

The pogrom was provoked by rumors that teenager Mikhail Rybachenko, who had been killed a month earlier in Dubossary, was the victim of a ritual murder. This version, publicly refuted by the investigation even before the pogrom, was supported by the only daily newspaper in Chisinau, Bessarabets, which belonged to the ardent anti-Semite Pavel Krushevan. A rumor spread among the pogromists about a secret tsar's decree allowing the beating of Jews. Student Pinkhus Dashevsky, avenging the pogrom, wounded Krushevan with a knife, but the wound was not fatal.