Shtetls - Definition and Overview

A shtetl or shtetele ("little town/city" in Yiddish) was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Shtetls (or 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 big city, like Lemberg or Czernowitz, was called a shtot.

Famous communities

19th century names are given, with present-day names and localisations in parentheses.

Shtots

• Breslau (Wrocław, Poland)
• Brest (Belarus) [1] (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1460&letter=B)
• Budapest (Hungary)
• Cluj-Napoca (Romania)
• Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine)
• Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland)
• Glogau (Głogów, Poland)
• Iaşi (Romania)
• Kishinev (Chişinău, Moldova)
• Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania)
• Königsberg (Kaliningrad, Russia)
• Kraków (Poland)
• Lemberg (L'viv, Ukraine)
• Minsk (Belarus)
• Odessa (Ukraine) [2] (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=23&letter=O)
• Pinsk (Belarus)
• Posen (Poznań, Poland)
• Prague (Czech Republic)
• Riga (Latvia) [3] (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=291&letter=R)
• Saint Petersburg (Russia)
• Vienna (Austria)
• Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) [4] (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=194&letter=W)
• 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] (http://sk.vlasenko.net/) [6] (http://www.glavbolgarstroy.com/eng/prj0_0_4.html))
• Tarnopol
• Berdyczów (Berdichev)
• Gura Humorului

External links

• JewishGen (http://www.jewishgen.org/)
  • The JewishGen ShtetlSeeker (http://www.jewishgen.org/ShtetlSeeker/)
  • ShtetLinks (http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/)
• Galicia - JewishEncyclopedia (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=30&letter=G)
• Cities of Poland - Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center Online (http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t036/t03605.html)
• The Art of Dora Shampanier (http://www.my-synagogue.com/about3.html)
• Towns in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life (http://www.avotaynu.com/books/encytowns.htm)
  • http://www.aforgottenodyssey.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album07&page=1(photo albums)
• [7] (http://www.kav-wien.at/arbeit/galizien.htm) [8] (http://www.hagalil.com/jct/ukraine/ukraine-2000.htm) [9] (http://www.jewishwebindex.com/polish_shtetls.htm) [10] (http://www.zchor.org/hitachdut/pinkas1.htm) [11] (http://www.zchor.org/hitachdut/pinkas7.htm) [12] (http://members.core.com/~mikerose/history.html) [13] (http://sk.vlasenko.net/wallpaper/)

• Jewish Communities(*)
• Diaspora [14] (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=329&letter=D)

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