The Jews of Galicia under Austrian-Polish Rule, 1869–1918

Abstract

Gaucia occupied animportant place in the history of the Jewish Diaspora. Galician Jews made up a majority of Habsburg subjects of Mosaic faith and formed a cultural bridge betweenWestjudenandOstjuden. Numerous outstanding Jewish political figures and scholars, such as Isaac Deutscher, Karl Radek, and Martin Buber, were born or raised in Galicia, where Zionist and Jewish socialist movements flourished at that time. The unique atmosphere of a Galician shtetl was recorded in Hassidic tales, in the books of Emil Franzos, Manes Sperber, Bruno Schulz, Andrzej Kuśniewicz, and others. Scholarly works on Jewish Galicia are, however, mostly outdated and relatively short. Consequently, scholars who use information on Galicia only as supplementary data often make numerous errors, and even for an educated American or West European Galicia remains a land of mystery. Marsha Rozenblit is absolutely right when she concludes a review essay, “The Jews of the Dual Monarchy,” with the following observation: “Indeed, it would be nice to know more about the traditional Jewish population of Moravia, Galicia and Hungary.” The present article is a contribution to filling that gap with regard to Galicia.