Recently, on Instagram I came across an intriguing post from Yiddish Shul, revealing a surprising connection between a famous Yiddish World War I ballad and a Ukrainian folk song. Although I was familiar with the Ukrainian song, its origins were unknown to me. As I delved into its history, I […]

While many old Jewish cemeteries still remain around Galicia, the same cannot be said of the Jewish burial grounds in Lviv (Lemberg / Lwów). Only found fragments of their ancient tombstones (matzevah) — which were used by the Nazis and Soviets as pavement and building material — remind us of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

An excerpt from Tamten Lwów—an eight-volume monograph about Lwów (Lviv)—in which Witold Szolginia describes the Jewish quarter as he remembers it from his visits in the 1930s. Witold Szolginia (1923-1996) was an architect, a native of Lwów until he was expelled to present-day Poland in 1946. Called “the encyclopedist of […]

“The Galician Petroleum Industry” by Valerie Schatzker for the Drohobycz Administrative District website From the middle of the nineteenth century, the history of the Jews of the Drohobycz Administrative District was closely connected with the history of the petroleum industry. As the demand for naphtha lamp oil grew, the oil-rich […]

Galicia was once home to a large Jewish population. Before the war, Jews were the third most numerous ethnic group in the region, after Poles and Ukrainians, and all Galician cities and towns had vibrant Jewish communities. Much of this heritage was destroyed during the war and most of what […]

In Lviv’s medieval old town, the Jewish community was most concentrated on the street which today is called Staroyevreyska, or Old Jewish Street. This Jewish quarter once had two synagogues and a house of learning. During WWII, these synagogues along with other traces of Jewish life were all but erased […]