Historical information, finds, and locations concerning Galicia’s different nationalities, famous figures, movements, and institutions, as well as some of my personal experiences and discoveries as I continue to research my ancestors who lived in this region and the context of their lives.
By Daniel Carkner Frank Seiden is an enigmatic figure of the early Jewish entertainment world in the United States. Born in Galicia in 1860, he arrived in New York’s Lower East side in 1877 and eventually became known as a street performer, magician, and vaudeville actor. By 1900 he became […]
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The first tollgates (Polish: rogatka; German: Schranke) in Lviv (Lemberg / Lwów) appeared at the end of the eighteenth century when Galicia passed into the possession of the Habsburgs. Until then, customs duties were collected at the city gates that were set within the city walls. In 1777, the dismantling […]
The Broderzingers The Broderzingers (“singers of Brody”) were itinerant troupes of folksingers who performed in taverns and inns initially in Galicia, and later in Bukovina, Transcarpathia, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Emerging in the early nineteenth century, these performers were among the first to perform Yiddish-language songs outside of Purim […]
By Kasia Komar-Macyńska for Nasze Słowo A bell tower was here, right here. Now we go inside… there was a white and black cement tile floor. But when the church was dismantled, they probably liked it, so they took it. But for some reason it was left at the sanctuary — […]
Below is a translation from Polish of the article Przemyśl na przełomie wieków …z zapisków Feliksa Mantela Feliks Mantel (1906-1990) came from a family of Przemyśl Jews. His father, Józef Mantel (1875-1920), was a lawyer and a close associate of [lawуer and socialist politician] Herman Lieberman. Józef Piłsudski, who stayed in […]
The tour company Pro Lviv with Love has initiated a project dedicated to giving new life to the women’s almanac Pershyi Vinok (First Wreath), originally published in Lviv in 1887. The almanac was the first work in Galicia and Ukraine to raise the “woman question” — in addition to works […]
Back during Austrian times and up until World War II, the Carpathian Hutsul town of Kosiv (formerly Kosów) was a center of natural medicine and vegetarianism. This is thanks to Dr. Apolinary Tarnawski (1851-1943), a Polish physician who at the end of the nineteenth century founded a private sanatorium in […]
People in Ukraine are usually perplexed when they see Ukrainians from the diaspora write their Дs like this: However, in the American and Canadian diasporas, this is an extremely common way of handwriting the letter Д — that is, a triangle with a leg inside as opposed to a flat-top […]
When Lviv’s Lenin statue was toppled in 1990, fragments of Jewish tombstones were discovered in the foundation. This came as no surprise—it was a known fact that Nazi and Soviet authorities not only destroyed Lviv’s Jewish cemeteries, but also used the stone to pave the city. Lviv had two Jewish […]
In Lviv, according to the Austrian census of 1910, 51% of the city’s population was Polish Roman Catholic, 28% Jewish, and 19% Ukrainian Greek Catholic. Linguistically, 86% of the city’s population used the Polish language while 11% used Ukrainian (Lviv). Looking at these statistics, it’s no surprise that the Ukrainian language was […]
The former buildings of the Sokół Polish Gymnastic Society stand today in the center of almost every Galician town on both sides of the Polish-Ukrainian border. Serving as sports and cultural centers, these were once significant buildings in the town space and often outstanding architectural masterpieces. Although today few of […]
