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Shtetl

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A shtetl or shtetele (Yiddish: , diminutive form of Yiddish shtot, "town") was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central 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, German: , Yiddish: .

Map of partitioned Lithuania & Poland.
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Map of partitioned Lithuania & Poland.

Map of the Pale of Settlement
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Map of the Pale of Settlement

Lyuboml'(Liuboml', Luboml) near Kovel', Russian Volhynia, around 1900. We can see the German and yiddish letter "Volks Küche/folqs-kikh".
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Lyuboml'(Liuboml', Luboml) near Kovel', Russian Volhynia, around 1900. We can see the German and yiddish letter "Volks Küche/folqs-kikh".

An early-20th century postcard depicting typical shtetl street scene in Poland
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An early-20th century postcard depicting typical shtetl street scene in Poland

Old Jewish cemetery in the shtetl of Medzhybizh, Ukraine.
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Old Jewish cemetery in the shtetl of Medzhybizh, Ukraine.

Contents

History

History of the oldest Eastern European shtetls began about a millennium ago and saw periods of relative tolerance and prosperity as well as times of extreme poverty, hardships and pogroms.

The May Laws introduced by Tsar Alexander III of Russia in 1882 banned Jews from rural areas and towns of less than ten thousand people. In the 20th century revolutions, civil wars, industrialization and the Holocaust destroyed traditional shtetl existence. However, Hasidic Jews have founded new communities in the United States, such as Kiryas Joel and New Square.

Shtetls (listed by present-day country)

Poland

: Note: Towns formerly in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia are marked with "(G)".

Other

Shtetl in fiction and folklore

Chelm figures prominently in the Jewish humor as 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.

The 2002 novel Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer, tells a fictional story set in the Ukrainian shtetl Trachimbrod.

Shtots (larger towns with significant pre-war Jewish populations)

See also

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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