Galician Jews

Galician Jews or Galitzianers (Yiddish: גאַליציאַנער, romanized: Galitsianer) are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating and developed in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Bukovina from contemporary western Ukraine (Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Ternopil Oblasts) and from south-eastern Poland (Subcarpathian and Lesser Poland). Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. Galician Jews primarily spoke Yiddish.

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 all tailors in Galicia were Jewish. 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. 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, and 2,200 Jews were lawyers. For comparison, there were only 450 Ruthenian (Ukrainian) lawyers. Galician Jewry produced four Nobel prize winners: Isidor Isaac Rabi (physics), Roald Hoffman (chemistry), Georges Charpak (physics) and S.Y.

Jews are recorded as arriving from Western and Central Europe to Galicia largely after the Black Death in the 14th 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. 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. During the 19th century Galicia and its main city, Lviv (Lemberg in Yiddish), became a center of Yiddish literature. Lviv was the home of the world's first Yiddish-language daily newspaper, the Lemberger Togblat. During the conflict, 1,200 Jews joined the Ukrainian Galician Army and formed an all-Jewish Ukrainian battalion called Zhydivs’kyy Kurin (UHA). In exchange, they were allotted 10% of the seats in the parliament of the West Ukrainian People's Republic which emerged in the same month and was disbanded nine months later.

The Polish–Soviet War ended with the Peace of Riga signed in March 1921. The borders between Poland and Soviet Russia remained in force until the invasion of Poland in September 1939, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continued in Soviet Ukraine. The rights of minorities in the newly reborn Second Polish Republic were protected by a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty signed by President Paderewski. 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. The number of Jews migrating to Poland from Ukraine and Soviet Russia grew rapidly. 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 the Polish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic had grown by over 464,000.