Shtetl

A shtetl or shtetele ("little town/city" in Yiddish language) was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Shtetls (Yiddish plural: shtetlach) were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia, and Romania. A larger city, like Lemberg or Czernowitz, was called a shtot.

Famous communities

Traditional names are given, with present-day names and localisations in parentheses.

Shtots

• Breslau (Wrocław, Poland)
• Brest, or Brisk (Belarus) [1]
• Budapest (Hungary)
• Cluj-Napoca (Romania)
• Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine)
• Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland)
• Glogau (Głogów, Poland)
• Iaşi (Romania)
• Kiev, Ukraine
• Kishinev (Chişinău, Moldova)
• Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania)
• Königsberg (Kaliningrad, today in Russia)
• Kraków (Poland)
• Lemberg (L'viv, Ukraine)
• Minsk (Belarus)
• Odessa (Ukraine) [2]
• Pinsk (Belarus)
• Posen (Poznań, Poland)
• Prague (Czech Republic)
• Riga (Latvia) [3]
• Vienna (Austria)
• Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) [4]
• Warsaw (Poland)

Shtetls

• Jurbarkas
• Jedwabne
• Lubawicz (Belarus)
• Grodno
• Slonim
• Vitebsk
• Obech, Belarus
• Belz (Galicia – today Ukraine)
• Brody (Galicia – today Ukraine)
• Bratslav
• Zolochiv
• Lutsk
• Kalush, Ukraine
• Sadagóra
• Ruzhin
• Tarascha
• Czortków
• Buczacz
• Luniniec
• Drohobycz
• Ger
• Kalush
• Starokonstantinov ([5] [6])
• Tarnopol
• Berdyczów (Berdichev, Volhynia – today Ukraine)
• Zhytomyr (Volhynia – today Ukraine)
• Gura Humorului
• Staszow
• Gombin (Poland) ([7])

The most famous fictional shtetl is Chelm, the legendary town of fools. Kasrilevke, the setting of many of Sholom Aleichem's stories, and Anatevka, the setting of the musical Fiddler on the Roof (based on other stories of Sholom Aleichem) are other notable fictional shtetls.

See also

• Jewish diaspora
• History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
• History of the Jews in Bessarabia
• History of the Jews in Carpathian Ruthenia
• History of the Jews in Poland
• History of the Jews in Germany
• List of European cities with alternative names

External links

• JewishGen
  • The JewishGen ShtetlSeeker
  • ShtetLinks
• Galicia, Diaspora – Jewish Encyclopedia
• Cities of Poland – Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center Online
• The Art of Dora Shampanier
• Towns in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life
  • http://www.aforgottenodyssey.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album07&page=1(photo albums)
• [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]