 | |
| Jewish population in Galicia | |
|---|---|
| 1772 | 150,000–200,000, or 5–6.5% of the total population |
| 1857 | 449,000, or 9.6% of the total population of the region.[1] |
| 1910 | 872,000, or 10.9% of the total population |
Galician Jews orGalitzianers (Yiddish:גאַליציאַנער,romanized: Galitsianer) are members of the subgroup ofAshkenazi Jews originating and developed in theKingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Bukovina from contemporary westernUkraine (Lviv,Ivano-Frankivsk, andTernopil Oblasts) and from south-eastern Poland (Subcarpathian andLesser Poland). Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province withinAustria-Hungary after thePartitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spokeYiddish.
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In the modern period, Jews were the third most numerous ethnic group in Big Galicia, after Poles andRuthenians. At the time that Galicia was annexed by Austria (i.e. theHabsburg monarchy), in 1772, there were approximately 150,000 to 200,000 Jews residing there, comprising 5–6.5% of the total population; by 1857 the Jewish population had risen to 449,000, or 9.6% of the total population.[1] In 1910, the 872,000 Jews living in Galicia comprised 10.9% of the total population,[1] compared to approximately 45.4% Poles, 42.9% Ruthenian, and 0.8% Germans.[2]
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Most of Galician Jewry lived poorly, largely working in small workshops and enterprises, and as craftsmen—including tailors, carpenters, hat makers, jewelers and opticians. Almost 80 percent of alltailors in Galicia were Jewish.[citation needed] The main occupation of Jews in towns and villages was trade:wholesale, stationery and retail. However, the Jewish inclination towards education was overcoming barriers. The number of Jewish intellectual workers proportionally was much higher than that of Ruthenian or Polish ones in Galicia.[citation needed] Of 1,700 physicians in Galicia, 1,150 were Jewish; 41 percent of workers in culture, theaters and cinema, over 65 percent of barbers, 43 percent of dentists, 45 percent of senior nurses in Galicia were Jewish,[citation needed] and 2,200 Jews were lawyers. For comparison, there were only 450 Ruthenian (Ukrainian) lawyers.[citation needed] Galician Jewry produced four Nobel prize winners:Isidor Isaac Rabi (physics),Roald Hoffman (chemistry),Georges Charpak (physics) andS.Y. Agnon (literature).Henry Roth, who wroteCall It Sleep, was a Galician Jew whose family migrated to the U.S. in the first decade of the 20th century.
Under Habsburg rule, Galicia's Jewish population increased sixfold, from 144,000 in 1776 to 872,000 in 1910, due to a high birth rate and a steady stream of refugees fleeing pogroms in the neighboring Russian Empire.[3] The Jews constituted one third of the population of many cities and came to dominate parts of the local economy such as retail sales and trade.[3] They were also successful in the government;emancipated in 1867, Galician Jews constituted 58 percent of Galicia's civil servants and judges by 1897.[4] During the 19th century Galicia and its main city, Lviv (Lemberg in Yiddish), became a center ofYiddish literature. Lviv was the home of the world's first Yiddish-language daily newspaper, theLemberger Togblat.[4]
Towards the end of World War I, Galicia became a battleground of thePolish-Ukrainian War, which erupted in November 1918.[5] During the conflict, 1,200 Jews joined theUkrainian Galician Army and formed an all-Jewish Ukrainian battalion calledZhydivs’kyy Kurin (UHA). In exchange, they were allotted 10% of the seats in the parliament of theWest Ukrainian People's Republic which emerged in the same month and was disbanded nine months later.[6] The West Ukrainian government respected Jewish neutrality during the Polish-Ukrainian conflict by an order ofYevhen Petrushevych, which protected Jews from being mobilized against their will or forced to contribute to the Ukrainian military effort.[7] Both Ukrainian and pro-Ukrainian Jewish armed units suffered significant losses as they retreated from Galicia before the army of GeneralEdward Rydz-Śmigły.[8] Although the Polish losses were estimated at more than 10,000 dead and wounded, the Western Ukrainian army lost in excess of 15,000 men.[9] "Despite the official neutrality, some Jewish men had been noticed aiding the combat Ukrainian units, and this fact alone caused a great enthusiasm in the Ukrainian press."[10] Reportedly, the Council of Ministers of the West Ukrainian People's Republic provided assistance to Jewish victims of thePolish pogrom in Lviv, wrote Alexander Prusin.[11] Nevertheless, as noted by Robert Blobaum fromWest Virginia University, many more pogroms and assaults against Galician Jews were perpetrated by the Ukrainian side in rural areas and other towns.[12] Between 22 and 26 March 1919, during massacres inZhytomyr (Jitomir), between 500 and 700 Jews lost their lives at the hands of armed men from the Ukrainian republican army led bySymon Petliura.[5] The chief organizer of the pogrom became minister of war soon thereafter.[13] Simultaneous Ukrainian pogroms took place in Berdichev, Uma, and Cherniakhov among other places.[5][14]
ThePolish–Soviet War ended with thePeace of Riga signed in March 1921. The borders between Poland and Soviet Russia remained in force until theinvasion of Poland in September 1939, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continued inSoviet Ukraine.[15] The rights of minorities in the newly rebornSecond Polish Republic were protected by a series of explicit clauses in theVersailles Treaty signed by PresidentPaderewski.[16] In 1921, Poland's March Constitution gave the Jews the same legal rights as other citizens and guaranteed them religious tolerance and freedom of religious holidays.[17] The number of Jews migrating to Poland from Ukraine and Soviet Russia grew rapidly.[18] According to the Polish national census of 1921, there were 2,845,364 Jews living in the country; but, by late 1938 that number had grown by over 16% to approximately 3,310,000. Between the end of thePolish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic had grown by over 464,000.[19]
In September 1939, most of Galicia passed toSoviet Ukraine. The majority of Galician Jews were murdered during theHolocaust. Most survivors migrated toIsrael, theUnited States, theUnited Kingdom orAustralia. In 1959, the census showed 29,701 Jews were living in Lviv province.[20] A small number have remained inUkraine orPoland.
In the popular perception, Galitzianers were considered to be more emotional and prayerful than their rivals, theLitvaks, who thought of them as irrational and uneducated. They, in turn, held the Litvaks in disdain, derogatively referring to them astseylem-kop ("cross heads"),[21] or Jews assimilated to the point of being Christian.[22] This coincides with the fact thatHasidism was most influential in Ukraine and southern Poland but was fiercely resisted in Lithuania (and even the form of Hasidism that took root there, namelyChabad, was more intellectually inclined than the other Hasidic groups).
The two groups diverged in theirYiddish accents and even in theircuisine, separated by the so-calledGefilte Fish Line. Galitzianers like things sweet, even to the extent of putting sugar in their fish.[23]
General Ukrainian Council,Dilo (L'viv), November 5, 1918, 3.
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