Galician Jews

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Galician Jews or Galitzianer Jews are a subdivision of the Ashkenazim geographically originating from Galicia, from western Ukraine (current Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil regions) and from the south-eastern corner of Poland (Podkarpackie and Lesser Poland voivodeships). Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews, was a royal province within Austro-Hungarian empire. Galician Jews were primarily Polish speaking. According to the census of 1900, Galician Jews recognized as their spoken language: Polish (76%), German (17%), and Ukrainian (5 %). citation needed

All calculations lead to the conclusion that in Galicia, Jews were the third most numerous ethnic group and comprised not less than 10 % of the entire Galician population. Here the thought of Ukrainian academician Yefremov finds its confirmation: "Jews as we know, live in closest ties with Ukrainian people, these are not even neighbours as most of other peoples, but of composing parts of people on the same Ukrainian land". Among the Jews, the most were the workers of small workshops and enterprises and craftsmen: tailors, carpenters, hat makers, jewellers, optics. Almost 80 % of all tailors in Galicia were the Jews. The main occupation of Jews in towns and villages was trade: wholesale, stationary, retail. Most of Galician Jewry lived poorly. However the Jewish inclination towards education was overcoming all barriers at those times. The number of Jewish intellectual workers proportionally was much higher than of Ukrainian or Polish ones in Galicia.

Out of total number of 1700 of physicians in Galicia, 1150 were the Jews. 41 % of workers of culture, theaters and cinema , over 65 % of barbers, 43 % of dentists, 45 % of senior nurses in Galicia were the Jews citation needed. 2200 Jews were the lawyers. For comparison, there were only 450 Ukrainian lawyers.citation needed Galician Jewry produced four Nobel prize winners: Isidor Isaac Rabi (physics), Roald Hoffman (chemistry), Isaac Bashevis Singer (literature) and Shmuel Agnon (literature).

From 1920 Galicia passed to Poland. Both Galician Jews and Ukrainians were not allowed by Polish government to work at the state enterprises, institutions, railway, post, telegraph etc. These measures were applied in their strictest form. Galician Jews and Ukrainians experienced ethnic oppression by undergoing a forceful Polonization. (for example, in 1912 in Galicia, there were 2,420 Ukrainian people's schools and in 1938 there remained only 352 citation needed). The Polish government conducted the plan of total assimilation of Jews and Ukrainians.

In September 1939 most of Galicia passed to Soviet Ukraine. The majority of Galician Jews perished in the Holocaust. The survivors immigrated to Israel or the United States. The very few who remained in Ukraine or Poland have undergone assimilation.

[edit] See also

• Galicia, Ukraine

[edit] Culture

In the popular perception, Galitzianers were considered to be more emotional and prayerful than their rivals, the Litvaks, who thought of them as irrational and uneducated. They, in turn, disdained Litvaks as cold fish. Ira Steingroot's "Yiddish Knowledge Cards" devote a card to this "Ashkenazi version of the Hatfields and McCoys."[1] This may be connected with the fact that Hasidism was most influential in Ukraine and southern Poland but was fiercely resisted in Lithuania (and even the form of Hasidism that took root there, namely Chabad, was more intellectually inclined than the other Hasidic groups).

The two groups diverged in their Yiddish accents and even in their cuisine, separated by the "Gefilte Fish Line,"[2] Galitzianers like things sweet, even to the extent of putting sugar in their fish.