Shtetl

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A shtetl or shtetele (Template:Lang-yi, derived from Template:Lang-de, meaning "little town/city") 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, Template:Lang-de, Template:Lang-yi. Image:Rzeczpospolita Rozbiory 3.png Image:Pale of Settlement map.jpg Image:Luboml.jpg Image:Jewishtownpostcard.jpg Image:Medzhibozh graves.jpg

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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.

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Shtetls (listed by present-day country)

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Poland

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

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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.

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

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See also

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External links

id:Shtetl he:שטעטל ja:シュテットル pl:Sztetl pt:Shtetl

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