Jewish City

This text is an attempt to look at Lviv through the prism of its Jewish history and to understand how the Jewish community and the city space mutually influenced each other.

In the history of the Jewish community, there has been a search for a balance between autonomy and inclusion in the political, economic, and cultural structures of the non-Jewish city. Over the centuries, this balance and the boundaries of possible integration expanded, and the Jewish community became a more complex and heterogeneous entity. The text examines these changes in various areas — the place of Jews in the city, relations with the authorities, religious transformations, education, and also tries to show the social structure of the Jewish community and its place. An integral part of the history of the Jews of Lviv is violence, which occurred on various scales throughout history and culminated in the almost complete extermination of the community during the Holocaust. The memory of the ancient Jewish community among the modern Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the city is a separate important topic.

The story is built around an interactive map of the city as part of the Interactive Lviv project. Reading the text is a kind of guide and an invitation to further study the map.

 Timeline   Community in the city space   Power and political mobilization   Religion and its transformations   Education   Wealth, pauperization, social responsibility   Violence and Jews   Consumption, culture, and leisure   Memory of the Jewish city   Related personalities   Sources and literature 

Key points in the Jewish community's life in Lviv

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The life of the Jewish community, which became a significant part of the population of Lviv in the late Middle Ages, was shaped and determined by spatial divisions established by external authorities. For the Jews themselves, life outside Palestine was defined by the term galut, which means "dispersion" or "diaspora." The Jewish community in the corporate societies of medieval and early modern Europe was autonomous, but its relationship with the authorities was constantly changing. The autonomy of Jewish communities allowed them to observe their religious norms, have their own judiciary, and live in their cultural environment, but did not dictate complete separation from society. The leadership of the Jewish community interacted with secular and ecclesiastical authorities, Jews were included in various types of city institutions, and in addition, they encountered Christians who lived in the city in everyday life.

As in the Middle Ages, so in the twentieth century, the lives of the residents of the Jewish districts were spent on the streets. It was there that they traded and bought things, where their children played near the houses. Jewish spaces could be identified by Jews and non-Jews from the outside, for example through certain religious precepts. A mezuzah — a case with the Shma Yisrael prayer — was nailed to the door jambs. The mezuzah was also a symbolic boundary between public and private spaces. The celebration of Sukkot involved setting aside a separate space outside for a sukkah, a tent in which families were supposed to live during the holiday. Sometimes residents arranged special places for this on balconies or terraces. Jewish shops could be identified by Yiddish inscriptions on signs or walls.

In the Orientalist discourse of the nineteenth century, Jewish places were separated by sensory attributes — sounds, smells, physical oppression. Austrian, Polish, and Ukrainian authors disgustedly described the smell of onions, the clamor of shopkeepers, the rumble of carts, the lack of hygiene, and the overcrowding of the Jewish "ghetto." For them, its problem was the very ethnicity of the residents, so the new districts where Jews began to live after 1868 were described in the same categories as the old Jewish "ghetto." This was the case with St. Anna Street (modern Horodotska) (Prokopovych, 2009, 102). Both the Austrian reformer Josef Rohrer and the Lviv-based Polish historian Stanislaw Schnür-Pepłowski saw the problem of the city in the entrepreneurship of the Jews, who, they say, massively built up the city with low-quality tenements, and so on, and projected all the troubles with the infrastructure onto them. Urban planners believed that the neglected Jewish quarters spoiled the image of the city, but directed their efforts to improve the appearance and infrastructures to other, more representative parts (Prokopovych, 2009, 34).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jewish quarter in the center of the city looked poor and unkempt. Historian Majer Bałaban, in the introduction to his book on the history of the Jewish quarter, described the ruin of some houses in the inner city, as well as the poor condition of the Jewish cemetery, whose valuable gravestones were crumbling and disintegrating. Such neglect of material heritage was characteristic of many cities and towns of Galicia, but Lviv as one of the main cities was a particularly notable example. In addition, it was here that the Jewish intelligentsia lived, which was concerned with issues of material culture. Writer Debora Vogel had similar impressions of the quarter of Zhovkva district. For her, Zhovkivska/Żółkiewska Street was a faceless and banal, semi-provincial, semi-big city street (Vogel, 1935).

Education and emancipation, which became components of the modernization process, freed the Jews from the spatial ghetto, but with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of the national state of the Second Polish Republic, their separation as an ethnic minority intensified. In the interwar period, in particular in the second half of the 1930s, anti-Semitism and economic nationalism spread. Calls by national political movements not to buy from Jewish stores isolated them from the general community and worsened the economic situation of small shopkeepers. In another sense, the term "ghetto bench" was used to denote a discriminatory practice in interwar Polish universities, when Jewish students could not sit down, but had to stand during lectures. There was also a numerus clausus — a limit on the number of Jewish students. During riots, such as the outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in 1932, the central streets of Lviv, the University, Jewish buildings, as well as transport could become dangerous for Jews, who could be physically attacked by youth groups of Endeks or people unrelated to politics.

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After the first division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Lviv became part of the new province of Galicia, and the Jewish communities found themselves in a new system of relations with the authorities, now Austrian. For the Habsburg dynasty, which still had no experience with such a large group of Jews, it was important to understand them and then integrate them. One important way of such integration was German-language schools, such as the schools of Herz Homberg, which, however, the Jews perceived as coercion.

One of the first moments of involvement of Jews in politics was the  revolution of 1848 , when, in particular, Orthodox Jews organized large rallies. The emancipation of 1867 was a turning point in the situation of the Jews, which eliminated numerous restrictions and, in particular, helped Jews enter political life on an equal footing with others. During the second half of the nineteenth century, we can observe the creation of political organizations, the emergence of new political leaders, the mass mobilization of the population, and the formation of coalitions with non-Jewish parties. Jewish activists in Galicia used the same tools of political mobilization as others — organizations, public lectures, the press, and leaflets. This differed from the Russian Empire, where full participation in political life for Jews became possible much later.

Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, public space became a full-fledged political actor. Lviv became the center of several organizations that had a decisive influence on the situation and orientations of the Jewish community. The German acculturation option was presented by the Shomer Israel organization, which was founded in 1868 and which published the German-language newspaper Der Israelit. In 1876, on the initiative of Shomer Israel, the Lviv kahal adopted a new charter that favored members of the community who had a secular education. Shomer Israel was present in the public space not only virtually — they organized a club with a library and a reading room, where people could gather and where lectures could be held. For some time, this club, which was also called a "casino," operated at 10 Sykstuska Street (modern Doroshenka Street), but the location often changed. This was characteristic of most organizations, which, depending on their financial situation, rented small or large premises and often moved around.

As a reaction to Shomer Israel, the Orthodox organization Makhzikei HaDat was formed, which fought against the secularization of the community and published a newspaper of the same name. In 1883, Makhzikei HaDat in Galicia consisted of 40,000 members. The Orthodox tried to maintain control of politics through solidarity with the Polish bloc in the Austrian parliament.

In the years 1882-1892, the pro-Polish organization Agudas Achim also operated, which also had its own printed publication Ojczyzna (Motherland) and also maintained a reading room and a club. Additionally, since 1903  the pro-Polish Society of Folk Schools (Towarzystwo Szkół Ludowych) operated the Bernard Goldman reading room, which organized concerts, plays for children, and courses for the illiterate. The reading room was located in the center of the Jewish quarter in the Krakiv/Krakowska suburb, at 21 Słoneczna Street (modern Kulisha).

In modern times, casinos and reading rooms became alternatives to religious gathering places such as synagogues and beth midrash. Jews, however, did not always have access to general clubs, which reluctantly accepted them as members (Vovchko, 2016, 112). Hence, the public space was divided not only according to political orientations, but also often according to ethnic divisions. One reading room could have about a thousand registered readers and, thanks to lectures and the availability of literature, performed not only a socializing, but also an educational function. 

All these organizations became both a bridge to enter politics and a way of mobilizing the population. However, they remained quite elitist. These movements often depended on a charismatic leader — for example, Makhzikei HaDat limited its activity after the death of leader Rabbi Szymon Schreiber in 1883.

Since the 1890s, the Zionist movement gained popularity in Galicia, which reached large groups of the population. The expansion of electoral rights gave the Zionists the opportunity to strengthen their influence in Galicia. Founded in 1888, the organization Zion published the newspaper Przyszłość (Future) in Polish. The organization's office was located at 17 Rynok Square. New political movements focused on a wider circle of supporters.

In the interwar period, the Jewish community became part of the new Polish state. Among the various political movements, Zionism became the strongest — starting in 1920, the National Zionist Organization was active, the press of which was the Polish-language newspaper Chwila (Wave). Chwila became one of the most popular Lviv newspapers, on par with the Ukrainian Dilo or the Polish Gazeta Lwowska. It was published twice a day and had an additional illustrated edition. New Zionist organizations also gained popularity, including Keren HaYesod, Keren Kayemet Israel, and the HaNoar HaZioni youth organization. Jewish activists, many of whom began their political activities before the war, became active participants in the city government. The representative body of the Jews of Lviv was the Jewish religious community, which dealt with religious and cultural issues. The vice president of Lviv was the Jew Wiktor Chajes. Attention to Jewish material culture — synagogues and the old Jewish cemetery — was growing, for which the Curatorium for the Care of Jewish Monuments was founded. The interwar period was a paradoxical time when the persecution of Jews was combined with their Polish acculturation and presence in the life of the city.

During the Soviet occupation in 1939, the absolute majority of organizations ceased to exist. During the German occupation, the Jewish community was liquidated, and the  Judenrat , which existed until August 1942, was the institution dealing with Jewish issues.

After the war, at the end of the 1940s, there were almost no Jewish institutions in Lviv due to the extermination of Jews and the policy of the Soviet government. The Jewish community as a religious organization depended on the Council for Religious Cults in Moscow, whose local representative was the Commissioner for Religious Cults. The synagogue was closed in 1962 under the pretext of fighting profiteering. At the same time, it was part of a wider anti-religious campaign of 1961-1962, when Christian churches were also closed.

In 1989, the Jewish community was restored and the  synagogue  on Vuhilna Street again became the center of secular Jewish life. The Sholom Aleichem Society became the main institution of the restored community.

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Religion was one of the most important elements that defined Jewish identity, but religious life, at the same time, underwent a series of rapid transformations over the centuries. In the Middle Ages, Judaism determined the rhythm and life of the Jewish community. Most of the important events and phenomena in the life of Jews, such as marriage, birth of children, education of children and self-education of adults, food, court, hospital care, and burials, were determined by religious norms. Community life required the presence of educated people who knew how to study the Torah and Talmud and teach it to others — so Jewish religious education was a necessary part of both small communities and such important cities as Lviv. During the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Lviv became a famous center of Torah study, where, in particular, Rabbi David HaLevi (Turei Zahav) worked. It was in his honor that the  Turei Zahav  synagogue in the middle of the city, later better known as the Golden Rose, was named.

Judaism involves constant debate and questioning and is by no means a fixed and unchanging phenomenon. In the sixteenth century, in the Palestinian city of Safed, a mystical teaching — the Kabbalah — appeared, which influenced Judaism in general, in particular in Eastern Europe. The eighteenth century was a time when the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe faced internal upheavals, namely the charismatic messianic movements. One of the first among them was the Sabbatean movement, which influenced Jacob Frank, a Jew from Podillia. The supporters of Jacob Frank formed the core of a new movement that rejected the kahal hierarchy and proclaimed the imminent arrival of the messiah. Key roles in this movement were played by two cities — Kamianets Podilskyi and Lviv, which became places of disputes between the Frankists, or as they were called "counter-talmudists," with "talmudists" — traditional Jews. The Lviv discussion took place in the  Latin cathedral  in 1759, as it was organized by the Catholic Church. During the discussion, the Frankists confirmed the myth of the use of Christian blood for ritual purposes and provoked the mass baptism of Jews.

Kabbalah also influenced the next movement, which became much broader and longer-lasting than Frankism — Hasidism. This charismatic movement envisaged the understanding of God not through learning, but intuitively. Hasidism undermined the kahal hierarchy and was attractive to a wider range of people. At the end of the eighteenth century, the movement was institutionalized through a network of spiritual leaders — tzaddiks — and gradually became an integral part of Jewish communities. Kahals in the cities often opposed the appearance of the Hasids and issued acts of prohibition against them, as happened in Lviv in 1792, when the rabbis banned the Hasidic way of slaughtering cattle. But the movement gained strength — and already in 1848, the Hasidim in Lviv built their  synagogue  in the Krakiv/Krakowskie suburb — the Jakob Glanzer Shul. Another Hasidic institution was the kloyz, an alternative to the beth midrash, a special place where adult men could study the Talmud in their spare time. The kloyz became a place of prayer and study of holy books, where the faithful gathered around a famous scholar. Studying in a kloyz could even last 24 hours a day, with the exception of Shabbat. In Lviv, the  Zikhron HaRav  kloyz on a street far from the center has been preserved, but the Hasidic synagogues  Agudas Schloma  and  Or Shemesh  have been destroyed. More important for the Hasids, however, were the smaller towns where the tzaddiks established their courts — in Galicia such centers became Zbarazh, Belz, and Chortkiv.

Hasidism became a vivid manifestation of the spiritual changes and searches that took place in the Jewish community of Lviv. Another phenomenon, which became the beginning of transformations of a different type, was the Haskalah — Jewish enlightenment, which originated in Berlin at the end of the eighteenth century. The goal of Haskala was the integration of Jews into society and a more rational approach to religion. In Galicia, however, maskilim such as Joseph Perl from Ternopil or Nachman Krokhmal from Zhovkva focused mostly on criticizing Hasidism. The Reform synagogue, which was called  Tempel , was built at the same time as the Hasidic Jakob Glanzer Shul — they were located several tens of meters from each other in the Krakiv suburb. The architecture of the Tempel imitated Viennese synagogues, and the building itself became the largest and most prominent in the Krakiv suburb. Tempel was financed by supporters of reformism, who also invited Abraham Kohn, a rabbi from Moravia, to Lviv. His stay in Lviv was short and caused resistance from part of the community, in particular when the Austrian authorities appointed Kohn as the chief rabbi of Lviv. In 1848, Abraham Kohn was poisoned by an Orthodox Jew, which was a shock to the community as it was one of the first ideologically motivated murders.

The memory of Abraham Kohn as a symbol of reformed Judaism and enlightenment continued to exist in Lviv; in particular, a Jewish school was named in his honor, as well the street on which he lived. Reformed Judaism was gaining more and more popularity. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, sermons in the Tempel were held in German (Shanes, 2014, 29).

As a counterweight to Reform Judaism, radical Jewish Orthodoxy was created. Paradoxically, Orthodoxy was a modern movement in its organization, which opposed the introduction of anything new in the ritual or the everyday, such as clothing or prayers. Lviv was of key importance for the institutional formation of this movement. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Jewish Orthodoxy became politicized, when the Jewish community in Lviv adopted a new, more liberal charter and founded the organization Makhzikei HaDat (Defenders of the Faith). The organization quickly became involved in political life and started financing candidates for the parliamentary elections.

The diversity of the Jewish community in Lviv at the end of the nineteenth century led to the emergence of two city rabbinical positions for the Orthodox and the Hasidim and two others for the Maskilim.

In addition to about forty large synagogues, there were almost two hundred prayer rooms in Lviv, which were located in basements or attics of private houses or in hospitals. Quite often guilds or prayer brotherhoods did not have their own synagogue, but rented a small room, a corner, or several benches in large synagogues, such as the Great City Synagogue or the Great Suburban Synagogue. In the nineteenth century, old guilds or even professions no longer had the importance they had before, but synagogues continued to have their old names. This is what happened with the Spodkes Synagogue at 6 Furmanska Street. Spodeks were hats made of sable fur, the predecessors of shtreimels — tall hats worn by Hasidim. In the nineteenth century, it was a small and dark synagogue, but both historian Majer Bałaban and writer Yoysef Margoshes mention it in their memoirs. The synagogue also housed an elementary school for boys — the cheder. In the nineteenth century, it no longer had the reputation of a guild synagogue, and those not related to the production of hats could also pray there.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the largest concentration of religious buildings — synagogues, baths, prayer brotherhoods — remained in the Jewish quarter of the inner city. According to historian of Lviv Jewry Majer Bałaban, even as late as the beginning of the twentieth century, the quarter continued to obey the pre-modern rhythms of life. Sometimes the synagogue servant would knock on the doors of the houses with a wooden hammer, calling the faithful to prayer, and on Saturday morning the streets were quiet and empty, as the inhabitants went to the synagogues for prayer (Balaban, 1909, 12).

Educational and business opportunities for Jews and their integration into non-Jewish society were often accompanied by secularization, and in extreme cases even baptism. This concerned mostly the elites. But the majority of Lviv Jews in the interwar period were supporters of Hasidism or Jewish Orthodoxy. In secular schools or gymnasiums, there were lessons about the Jewish religion, similar to the lessons about Christian religion for Christian students. Synagogues, in addition to being a place of prayer and socialization, also became a place for political speeches and lectures. For instance, during the election campaign of 1939, representatives of the Jewish Electoral Bloc spoke on Saturday mornings in numerous synagogues in Lviv.

During the Holocaust, almost all Lviv rabbis were killed, except for the mentioned rabbi David Kahane, who managed to survive thanks to the head of the Greek Catholic Church, Andrey Sheptytskyi. Rabbi Jecheskel Lewin of the reformist community came to Sheptytskyi after the German occupation to report the abuse of Jews and ask for support. Jecheskel himself was killed in the pogrom, but thanks to the intervention of the Greek Catholic Church, it was possible to save his son Kurt Lewin, who left memories of the Holocaust in Lviv. Also, the Nazis destroyed most of the synagogues, leaving only the less important ones, or those that could not be blown up due to the proximity of other buildings.

The former Hasidic synagogue on Vuhilna Street became the new center of community life after the Holocaust. It acted as a religious institution and as a center for humanitarian aid. At the beginning of the 1960s, attendance at the synagogue decreased, and in 1962 it was liquidated and the building was handed over to the sports department of the Lviv Printing Institute. Lviv Jews could not legally gather for prayer until the end of the 1980s. The identity of Soviet Jews became less and less based on their religious affiliation. However, a sense of belonging to Jewishness remained, which, in particular, we can see thanks to the burials in the  new Jewish cemetery .

With the restoration of the Jewish religious community in 1989 and the return of its property, religious life is being restored in the  Tsori Gilod  Synagogue. Given the decades of strict secularization policy, there were no people in the Lviv community capable of taking over the functions of a rabbi, so rabbis came from abroad. The first rabbi, Awrum Rozental, belonged to the Belgian Hasidim, and the next, Shlomo Bold, to the Karlin-Stolin Hasidim. There is also a reformist community in Lviv. However, in post-Soviet times, religion is not the main part of identity for most Lviv Jews.

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Religious education was one of the key ways of socialization for Jews. In the traditional community, all boys were required to receive primary education in the cheder starting at the age of three or four and to have the skills to read and interpret the Torah and Talmud. Children who spoke Yiddish at home also learned Hebrew and Aramaic during their studies. For most, education ended with the cheder itself, but teenagers from wealthy families or those who found a patron could continue it in yeshivas.

At the end of the eighteenth century, after Lviv became part of the Austrian Empire, there were 83 cheders in the city, in which 1,574 children studied (Pelczar, 2016, 18). Despite the efforts of the Austrian authorities to arrange secular education, religious education remained a priority for the community. Usually, cheders were small rooms (the word "cheder" is from the Hebrew "room") in the houses of the Melamed teachers. Yoysef Margoshes recalled his first teacher, who was the shammes and chazan of the Ose Tov Synagogue on Sykstuska Street (modern Doroshenka) and lived in the courtyard of the synagogue. Education in the cheders was criticized by Jewish educators, who believed that the teachers were unqualified and that the children studied in poor conditions, suffered physical punishment, and could not acquire the skills needed for future life.

Traditional Jewish schooling was considered a problem by both imperial officials and Jewish Maskilim educators. The Austrian Empire tried to overcome the backwardness of schools through the creation of German-language schools for Jewish children. In Galicia, Herz Homberg oversaw the educational reform, and so the schools became known as "Homberg schools." In 1786, there was only one such school in Lviv, and in 1797 there were already six — the main one in the inner city, one in the Krakiv/Krakowska and in the Halych/Halicka suburbs, and three for women. However, due to the opposition of local communities, the schools were closed in 1806. In 1842, public schools with the German language of instruction began to open again. The director of the first such school — the German-Jewish main public school in Lviv — was the reformist preacher Abraham Kohn. The school was secular, but it taught Hebrew and Judaism.

Subsequently, the demand for secular schools began to grow, and in 1856 two more three-class "trivial" schools were opened — the city school at 3 Za zbrojownją Street (modern Arsenalna) and the suburban school at 8 Słoneczna Street (modern Kulisha). The secular schools created competition for the cheders, which in the nineteenth century still remained important for the education of boys. Religious education of girls, on the other hand, was not mandatory, so parents preferred to send them to secular schools. Because of this, the number of girls in the class usually exceeded the number of boys, for example in 1856 there were 66 boys and 124 girls in the city school. Jewish children also studied in the city's Christian schools. Later, this situation created an imbalance in the level of integration, because women knew languages ​​and secular subjects better than men, and also left the community through marriages with Christians and baptism.

The city trivial school on Za Zbroyivneyu Street in 1889 became a six-grade girls' school — the  Abraham Kohn school , and united the city and suburban schools. However, until the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of schoolgirls in it decreased. Researcher Mirosław Łapot explains this by the fact that the inner city quarter was being rebuilt and the wealthier residents of the new buildings chose new schools for their children. Kohn's school was attended by poorer girls who lived in Znesinnia/Zniesienie, Klepariv/Kleparów, and Zamarstyniv/Zamarstynów, and it was difficult for them to get there in winter (Łapot, 2015, 490).

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, Jewish gymnasiums were founded, such as the gymnasium of Adela Karp-Fuchsowa (1919), of Josefa Goldblatt-Kamerling (1899), and the classical gymnasium of the Jewish society of folk and secondary schools (1918). However, Jewish children also went to general gymnasiums. For minorities, education was a way to achieve social mobility and later acquire a profession. Schools, which were once a way of socialization in one's own community, became a bridge to integration into the surrounding environment. It was in the schools that new identities were formed — a citizen of the empire or a national state.

In the interwar period, Jewish schooling expanded, and there were schools for various directions of Jewish political movements. Jewish students were prominent in universities, especially in the interwar period. The percentage of Jewish students at the Jan Kazimierz University in the 1920s was the highest in all of Poland at the time (1921-1922 — 46.6%), later the number decreased. A slightly smaller percentage of Jewish students studied at the Polytechnic (Rędzinski, 582). Jewish students founded their own organizations, such as the Society of Jewish Physicians, the Society of Jewish Law Students, and the  The Society of Jewish Students of Philosophy.  In the interwar period, the university was a place of social tension. Polish students belonging to the All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska), a movement associated with the radical right, initiated and supported discriminatory initiatives such as the ghetto bench and the numerus clausus — quotas on the number of Jewish students.

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The Jewish community at the end of the nineteenth century was increasingly stratified socially and economically and became more and more complex. Jewish entrepreneurs founded hotels and banks, built villas. This wealth was visible in public space, for example in the case of the  Sprecher Building , commissioned by one of the richest Lviv entrepreneurs Jojne Sprecher, or the  Hausmann Hotel  next to the passage commissioned by Efraim Hausmann (today Kryva Lypa Passage). This new wealth drew anti-Semitic criticism from non-Jewish political circles, who accused Jews of economic dominance in the cities. In the interwar period, the Jewish middle class built villas in new prestigious areas, such as the  villa  of the industrialist Adolf Finkelstein or the  house  of the banker Herman Feldstein on Herburtów Street (modern Hlinkу). In addition to their own residences, they owned various restaurants or hotels in representative central streets. There were, however, still parts of the city that were perceived as "Jewish" and less prestigious.

The traditional community assumed a united concern for the well-being of all its members, in particular, this was characteristic of the anonymous Jewish community. In the community, there was a social stratification between the rich and the poor, and it was the duty of the rich to give a part of their earnings to support or educate orphans and widows, to hospitals and other institutions. There was stratification in access to education in the community. Belonging to a well-known family of Torah scholars or yeshus was as important as wealth. The wealthier members of the community had duties for the poorer ones, and this was regulated by the  kahal . In the inner city, there are still buildings that remind us of the charitable activities of the community, such as the hekdesh hospital. Unlike the more modern Jewish hospital, the hekdesh was a place where elderly or impoverished members of the community came for treatment or to die. The community maintained the Talmud Torah, a school for children of poor parents. Charity ("tzedakah" in Hebrew) was manifested in various situations, for example, during a wedding, the bride had to distribute food to the poor. The box for tzedakah was located in the synagogues and is preserved today in the  Hasidic synagogue  on Vuhilna Street and in the  Tsori Gilod synagogue , as well as in the Golden Rose Synagogue.

Modernization processes and social changes in Galicia in the Austrian Empire also meant the growth of social stratification. The old structures no longer coped with the functions of protecting the poor and with new complex challenges. Therefore, alternative charitable organizations began to appear, which focused on the problems of the community — the education of children, the situation of widows and orphans, and others. Charitable societies, such as soup kitchens, have been known since the nineteenth century. Jewish charitable societies resembled Christian ones because they were part of a new type of charity. Often the soup kitchens served both Christians and Jews.

Jewish merchants, both poor and wealthy, were the most visible in the urban space. In his memoirs about the beginning of the twentieth century, the actor Alexander Granach, describing the Trade Exchange in the  Exchange and Industry Chamber  on Akademicka Street, wrote that "Jews with long beards and tall top hats stood on the corner of the exchange, discussing big geshefts."

But at the same time, numerous Jewish poor were visible on the streets of the city. In particular, such places were the Jewish quarter in the Old Town with its narrow streets and the Krakiv/Krakowska suburb. Synagogues, such as the  Great City Synagogue , and the Beth Hamidrash were located there. Signs or inscriptions in Yiddish on the walls were also associated with poverty, traditionalism, and simplicity. In the eyes of non-Jewish observers, the historical Jewish districts embodied negativity and a lack of modernity. Blacharska Street (modern Fedorova) became a center of beggars. Warsaw reporter Yoel Mastboim, who visited Lviv in 1928, compared it to Krochmalna Street in Warsaw, only poorer. If in the center of the Warsaw Jewish quarter it was still possible to meet slightly better dressed women and men, then the Lviv Old Town quarter in the interwar period appeared to be entirely poor and quiet. The reporter was struck by the calm dignity of the beggars, who did not run after him and did not try to beg for money, but silently waited for alms.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Galicia faced the problem of trafficking of women. There was a growing threat that young girls would be recruited and smuggled to other countries. Anti-Semitic propaganda portrayed Jews as human traffickers. After the 1892 trial in Lviv of a group of twenty-seven Jewish human traffickers, anti-Semitic associations intensified. Often it was Jewish girls who became victims. One of the reasons was that Jews often avoided official marriage registration and married only religiously, in the presence of a rabbi. Therefore, traffickers married girls and took them from their hometown, but then it turned out that there was no marriage (Wingfield, 176). The problem was international and therefore attracted the attention of numerous charitable organizations that were trying to understand how to save women from prostitution. One of these benefactors was the Viennese activist Berta Pappenheim, who visited Galicia at the beginning of the twentieth century and cooperated with local organizations. In 1903, a Jewish society was founded in Lviv, which fought specifically against the involvement of Jewish girls in prostitution. Already in the interwar period, the Róża Melcer Society of Jewish Women was founded.  Cecylja Klaften  organized a school for girls, where needlework, sewing, and housekeeping were taught. It was a Jewish foundation that founded a new  hospital , equipped with technical equipment according to new ideas about health.

Charitable activity in the twentieth century intensified due to the destruction of the First World War, which changed the scope and strategies of aid. This was a general phenomenon, but the Jewish situation was particularly difficult. The plight of the Jews of Galicia, who suffered from the attacks of the Russian army, economic ruin, and the need to leave their homes, was known to international charitable organizations. Some of them, in particular the Russian EPOKO (Jewish Committee for Aid to Victims of War) or the American Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), appeared precisely because of the wartime needs. During a visit to Lviv in 1915, the writer Szymon An-sky mentioned the existence of forty-five soup kitchens, five of which were kosher.

Jewish elites were aware of social problems and that the old methods would not help to overcome them. Charity in the new era set new goals for itself and was organized around the foundations of benefactors. Their goal was not only to directly help the poor, but also to create new conditions for education or work. Foundations organized shelters for the homeless, such as the Shelter and Canteen for the Homeless on Mularska Street.

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The city was often a space with a high risk of violence against Jews. It could be caused by domestic conflicts that occurred among representatives of other groups. But often this violence was directed at Jews as a minority and typical "other." The community of the Old City in ancient Lviv had a separate quarter, which was closed by the Jewish gate (Porta Judaeorum) at the corner of modern Ruska and Fedorova streets. The entrances to the Jewish quarter were closed, just as the city gates, in order to protect against attackers — nobles, commoners, soldiers, and most of all Jesuit students. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, attacks were so regular that sometimes the gate had to be closed even during the day. The situation of the Jews of the Krakiv/Krakowska suburb was more difficult, especially during the times of the existence of the city within the walls, because they had to seek shelter there. One of the most terrible was the attack by students on the Jews of the Krakiv suburb in 1619, during which 129 people were killed and  synagogues  were destroyed. The memory of those killed was preserved later; in particular, a list of the victims’ names was placed in the Golden Rose Synagogue.

The conflicts of the modern period — wars and episodes of statelessness — created new threats. During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there were no significant interethnic conflicts in Galicia  until the summer of 1898, when a series of pogroms took place in Western Galicia. However, the police stopped the street violence and it did not become large-scale. One of the first mass tragedies was the beginning of the First World War and the persecution of Jews during the Russian occupation of cities galvanized by the Russian army. During the first pogrom, eighteen Jews were killed and the others locked themselves inside the synagogue and opened it only when the governor placed guards near it (An-sky, Tragedia, 138). Another example of discrimination, in particular, was the restriction on movement between districts in 1915, when Jews were not allowed to ride trains or even come near the  Central Railway Station , paralyzing the economic life of the community.

In November 1918, after the Polish-Ukrainian war, the Polish army galvanized a pogrom in the Jewish quarter. The pretext was the neutrality of Jewish figures during the Polish-Ukrainian war. Rioters set fire to synagogues. Photo documentation of the damage to the  Chasidim Schul  in the Krakiv district has survived.

In interwar Poland, violence could also occur due to restrictions or discrimination in various areas. A famous example of this was discriminatory laws, such as the ghetto bench at the university, when Jewish students were forced to stand during classes. Ukrainian and Polish nationalist organizations and activists opposed Jewish shops, calling for their boycott. This often resulted in broken windows or damaged property. Ludwik Stockel, who was a student at Jan Kazimierz University, recalled how the constant demonstrations of Endeks created an atmosphere of menace in the streets: "Attending lectures or simply being at the university in such a tense atmosphere was hardly a pleasant experience" (Shandler, 2002, 188). During periodic outbreaks of violence, classes at the university were suspended, as this was where most of the attacks were concentrated. An example of this escalation was five days in November 1932, after the  Polish student  in a bar fight, when university students began to attack Jews in the streets. Violent actions were demonstrative and took place on central streets, such as Akademicka, Legionów, or Wały Hetmańskie. The attackers tore down signs from Jewish shops and broke windows, and also stormed into coffee shops in groups. The victims were also tram passengers, who were thrown out of the transport or beaten. The railway station also became a dangerous place.

The German occupation during the Second World War was the peak of violence against the Jews of Lviv, which ultimately ended in their almost complete extermination. These were often undisguised acts of aggression  involving local population , in particular during the  pogrom of 1941 . Later, the Jews were isolated in a ghetto, from where they were sent to the death camps such as Belzec and Sobibor, and also to the  Janowska concentration camp  in Lviv. One of the most controversial issues is the participation or indifference of local residents during the occupation. Some researchers, such as Timothy Snyder, attribute the normalization of mass crime during World War II to previous waves of violence that began in 1939.

The Holocaust involved not only the killing of people, but also the destruction of their memory and the elimination of the Jewish presence from the city. The Nazis, with the involvement of the local auxiliary militia, blew up synagogues, in particular the main synagogues — the  Tempel ,  Golden Rose ,  Great City  and  Great Suburban  Synagogues, and the  Hasidim Schul  synagogue. They also started the destruction of the  Old Jewish cemetery .

After the war, the violence turned into a symbolic wiping of traces of the Jewish and Polish presence from the streets of Lviv. The new Soviet government initially allowed the existence of a synagogue, but later eliminated Jewish street names, continued the destruction of the cemetery, on the site of which a bazaar was built, and did not allow the commemoration of the tragic events of the Holocaust.

Until 1962, the main focus of Jewish life was the  synagogue on Vuhilna street , where prayers were held and where Jews received humanitarian aid. The synagogue became the center of socialization of those Jews who came from the evacuation and were not local, as well as those who survived in Lviv. In June 1945, a rumor spread through the city that Jews were killing children. A crowd of people descended on the synagogue, but was stopped by the police. In 1962, the last Lviv synagogue was closed.

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The appearance of the concept of leisure in industrial society meant the appearance of a whole series of spaces that were intended for recreation, sports, and socialization. The accelerated modernization of Jews also affected their involvement in leisure practices. Quite often places of recreation — parks, cinemas, theaters, cafes, and dance halls — did not provide for divisions based on ethnicity. In the twentieth century, the process of acculturation intensified, and Jews also communicated in Polish and used the same services as the rest of the inhabitants. Krystyna Chiger, who was born in Lviv in 1935, remembered going to the cinema to see the Disney cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, there were places and ways of recreation that were separate for different ethnic communities. One of the most popular places of entertainment was the Jewish Yiddish theater. Performances were staged in small theaters, often with music and songs. The most famous of them was the  Gimpel theater , which started operating in 1889. The Jewish theater was a phenomenon that overcame social restrictions — both workers and artisans, and representatives of the upper middle class came there. At the turn of the century, the theater did not have its own venue, so it rented various premises, in particular the premises at  Jagiellońska Street, 11 (modern Hnatiuka) or the building of the  Colosseum .  Theater troupes from other cities of Galicia, as well as from the Russian Empire, performed in the theater. In 1939, a  new Jewish theater  was built in Lviv, which became one of the most striking modernist buildings in the city. Performances never took place there, however, because the Second World War began.

This is how the actor Alexander Granach recalled his first experience of being in the Gimpel Theater: "Soon, a long, enticing jingle of the bell rang out, and everyone obediently began to enter the theater. There were men at the door who had to be shown tickets, they helped the audience find their seats, which were even numbered. The theater was drowning in the light of bright lamps. We were sitting in the thirteenth row. People were in front of us and behind us. The hall was full, but people kept walking, laughing, greeting, nodding to each other. The bell rang a second time. The hall became even noisier — the doors were being closed. Many people were still standing, talking with their neighbors. And then the bell rang for the third time. It became quieter. At the very front, in front of the first row, on the curtain was painted a man wrapped in a hide playing the shepherd's pipe and an almost naked, plump woman, her hair barely covering her breasts, listened to his playing. Just then the gong struck, the lights went out, and the hall became dark. The curtain below suddenly flashed with light. The gong struck a second time — music came from somewhere, the hall became completely quiet, the third strike of the gong and my heart almost jumped out of my chest with anticipation!" (Granach, 2012, 145-146).

Trade often took place on the street, as described by observers. Writer Joseph Roth mentioned in his 1934 report: "Near the great synagogue a street market flourishes. The street vendors prop up its walls with their shoulders," considering it a "peoplization" of the city's sacred spaces (Roth, 1995). Descriptions of Jewish Lviv in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are mostly descriptions of small shops and other places of trade. Writer Debora Vogel, in her essay about the Jewish quarters of Lviv, mentions very poor vendors who sold cheap trinkets, such as hairpins, pins, or handkerchiefs. Historian Majer Bałaban left memories of Szeroka Street (modern Horodotska), on which he grew up and which in the second half of the nineteenth century became one of the centers of Jewish life. The historian described everyday life, for example, "Weber's little shop with soda water and kosher sausage, something like a small coffee shop, where subjects from the district gathered, and late passers-by always received a cold glass of soda water and a hot glass of tea" (Bałaban, "Z wczorajszego Lwowa," Chwila, No. 2281, p. 4).

On the nearby Bergerów Square, which no longer exists today, various entertainments took place: "...the square was rented out for various events, such as American swings (Altalena americana), panoramas, anatomical museums with ‘offices for adults,’ and even a menagerie, in front of which gaping crowds gathered, who attentively listened to the words of the summoner, the false tones of a barrel organ, and the squeals of girls who were lifted by a swing or rocked by a carousel" (Bałaban, "Z wczorajszego Lwowa," Chwila, No. 2281, p. 4). Such entertainments, as well as traveling menageries or circuses, were popular among the inhabitants of poorer and more neglected districts, such as the Zhovkva/Żółkiewska and Krakiv/Krakowska suburbs.

From the end of the nineteenth century, new elegant consumer spaces, such as covered shopping passages, also appeared in Lviv. They housed shops, cafes, cinemas, and sometimes offices of various organizations. Since the passages had a roof, one could hide in them from the cold and rain. Passages created new practices for spending free time that united different social groups. Although shops and cafes became places of leisure for the middle and upper class, due to the similarity to the street, poor townspeople could also spend time in the passages. Lectures, demonstrations, and strikes were also held in the passages. Many Lviv passages were owned by Jews, including  Hausmann passage  and the hotel of the same name,  Grüner passage , the now defunct Grödel brothers' Passage near the railway station. It can be assumed that this was a convenient way of investing in real estate.

The consumer revolution influenced the urban space; in particular, it brought about the appearance of cafes, which became an important space for socialization. At the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, various cafes became a meeting place for various professional and social groups: journalists, entrepreneurs, Ukrainian or Polish intelligentsia. In Mieczysław Orłowicz's guide to Lviv, it is mentioned that Zionists gathered at the Grand Cafe at  Legionów street, 11 .

Another new phenomenon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was sport, which, in addition to entertainment, also had a political dimension, because it developed during the heyday of the Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish national movements. In Zionism, as in nationalism, sports and the development of the body in general were of special importance, since they aimed to create a new type of Jew — physically strong and capable of hard work, especially in the conditions of the future resettlement in Palestine. Sports were also important for women. Jewish sports clubs, which began to be created at the beginning of the twentieth century and flourished in the interwar period, were related to various parties, most often Zionist. The most famous club was Hasmonea. One of the most popular sports was football, but the club also practiced gymnastics and table tennis. Hasmonea built a  stadium  on Zolota Street in 1920, and until the beginning of the war, football matches were held there.

Jewish culture mastered new media, including radio. Jewish writers, such as Debora Vogel, gave lectures on the air. Another dimension of interest in Jewish culture was the duet of the characters Aprikosenkranz and Untenbaum (Mieczysław Monderer and Adolf Fleischen) in the program Wesoła Lwowska Fala on the  Lviv radio . This duet was rather a manifestation of the stereotypical perceptions of the local Jewish community.

In the interwar period, interest in material Jewish culture, which was often in poor condition, grew. On the initiative of the collector  Maksymilian Goldstein , in 1934, the  Jewish Museum  was opened at 12 Bernstein Street (modern Sholom Aleichem), and the Society of Friends of the Jewish Museum was organized. The museum was housed in a public building intended for the administration of the Jewish community and contained various examples of Jewish art: ritual silver and fabrics from the synagogue, ritual and secular ceramics, ketubahs, paintings, and more. Visiting the museum was free. After the war, the collections of the Jewish Museum were divided between several Lviv museums.

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The history of Jewish Lviv did not end with the Holocaust, but it changed radically. The continuity of the prewar Jewish community was interrupted by the war, Jewish residents were exterminated, institutions were liquidated, and architecture was destroyed. The Jewish residents of Lviv who came after the war mostly came from the territories of the Soviet Union and were culturally different from the local Jews. They began to form their own community and gradually took over the historical memory of Lviv's past. This appropriation of memory is characteristic not only of the Jewish community — in the postwar period the population of Lviv changed almost completely.

The process of returning the memory of the prewar community was difficult and marked by a lack of persistence and interruptions. The turning point was the restoration of the Jewish community in 1989. One of the first steps was the opening of a  Lviv ghetto victims memorial , which was erected in 1992 at the site of one of the entrances to the ghetto. The author of the monument was Lviv sculptor Luiza Shterenstein. The construction of the monument was financially supported by various Lviv enterprises that operated in the city in the early 1990s.

With the beginning of the 2000s, institutions began to appear in Lviv that preserved the memory of the Jews of Lviv and Galicia. Such a place became the museum Traces of Galician Jews of the charitable organization Hesed-Arieh. In 2012, a branch of the Museum of the History of Religion dedicated to Jews with an exhibition about the righteous people of the world was opened on Staroyevreyska Street in the old Jewish quarter. Artifacts from prewar collections are periodically exhibited at the Museum of Ethnography and the Lviv Historical Museum.

To a large extent, the formation of memory about the Jews of Lviv is influenced by the tourist industry, which uses elements of history for commercial purposes. Sometimes this leads to the creation of "virtual Jewry," a phenomenon described by researcher Ruth Ellen Gruber that involves replacing the real memory of Jews with a stereotypical image of them. An example of this for a long time was the Golden Rose restaurant near the ruins of the Turei Zahav synagogue, which served Jewish food and used stereotypes about the supposed stinginess of Jews. However, even a commercial approach to heritage can be useful for informing about Jewish Lviv. In recent years, Lviv tourist offices offer tours of Jewish places.

There are various circles interested in preserving the historical Jewish heritage – the Jewish community of Lviv, the communities of Lviv natives who now live in other countries, the academic community, artists. Each of these groups is aware of its responsibility for the history of the Jewish community in a different way. For modern Jews of Lviv, it is a feeling of religious and ethnic affiliation with former residents. People with roots in Lviv are interested in the history of their ancestors. The academic community is trying to include Jewish history in the history of Ukraine, which, in particular, is happening at the Jewish Studies program of the Ukrainian Catholic University. For artists, one of the important topics is forgetting and remembering the Jewish history of Lviv, which was revealed in the projects of Jason Francisco, Rachel Stevens, Asya Gefter, Andrij Bojarov, Christian Herrmann, and others. There have been several films about the modern Jewish community of Lviv, including  Boris Dorfman a Mentsh , directed by Yiddish Gabriella von Zeltman and Uwe von Zeltman, or Der Synagogeretter (2021). These films try to understand how a modern community is looking for its place in Lviv and modern Ukraine. One of the most famous examples in the world is the book East-West Street (2016) by  Philippe Sands , which tells the story of two Jewish lawyers associated with Lviv, who helped formulate the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity. It is characteristic that all these projects show the importance of Jewish Lviv for the representation of Ukraine in the international community.

There are still many places, the memory of which is erased or is disappearing. The Krakiv Market was built on the site of the former old Jewish cemetery, and due to the lack of identification, few visitors know about the former significance of the place. The cemetery was destroyed, and the remains of matzevot, which in Soviet times were used as building materials, are still found in various places in Lviv. The territory of the former Yaniv/Janowska concentration camp is still unorganized, and there is no memorial or sufficient information about the tragic history of this place. One of the few preserved Lviv synagogues, Jakob Glanzer Shul, is still not fully renovated due to a lack of funds and is being protected from destruction by a volunteer organization. Also, periodically, sights and memorials become objects of anti-Semitic vandalism. Sometimes the damage is so severe that it cannot be removed from plaques or buildings.

At the same time, there are local initiatives aimed at popularizing ideas about Jewish history and culture in general, as well as at the memory of local Jews. Lviv has become a place for Jewish-themed festivals, such as Lviv KlezFest or Yiddish Days in Krakidaly, and the audience of these events is not limited to the Jewish community. The relevance of the issue of heritage preservation was manifested, in particular, in the restoration or reinterpretation of former significant places for the Jewish community. In 2014 and 2021, the  Space of Synagogues  and a water well, respectively, were built in the inner city in the  former Jewish quarter . 

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Leszek Allerhand, 1931-2018 — survived the Holocaust in Lviv. He published the book Memories from Another World, which  intertwines  the diary of his grandfather Maurycy Allerhand about the Holocaust in Lviv and the memories of Leszek himself;

Majer Bałaban, 1877-1942 — a Lviv historian who researched the history of Polish and Galician Jews;

Shlomo Bold — the chief rabbi of Lviv and Western Ukraine since 1993;

Leon Weliczker Wells, 1925-2009 — survived the Holocaust in Lviv. He left  memoirs  of this period in the city;

Efraim Hausmann — owner of the Grand Hotel, Hausmann Passage;

David HaLevi (Turei Zahav), 1587-1667 — rabbi, one of the most famous commentators of Joseph Caro's ritual code, author of the well-known work Turei Zahav;

Maksymilian Goldstein, 1880-1942 —  art collector  and critic, one of the initiators of the creation of the Jewish Museum in Lviv;

Alexander Granach, 1890-1945 — a Jewish actor of German theaters and American cinema;

Dawid Kahane, 1903-1998 — rabbi of the progressive synagogue Ose Tov;

Cecylja Klaften, 1881-after 1939 — a teacher and a well-known Lviv public figure;

Abraham Kohn, 1806-1848 — the rabbi of the progressive Tempel Synagogue in Lviv, one of the ideologues of reforms in the Jewish community. In 1848, he was a member of the Central People's Council and Bayrat, close to the governor. Killed in Lviv on September 16, 1848;

Jecheskel Lewin, 1897-1941 — a rabbi in Katowice, Kurt Lewin's father;

Kurt Lewin, 1925-2014 — American economist, son of Rabbi Jecheskel Lewin, was saved during the Holocaust thanks to the guardianship of Andrey Sheptytskyi, Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church;

Stanisław Lem, 1921-2006 — science fiction writer originally from Lviv;

Solomon Leynberg, 1891-1938 — military man, lieutenant of the Ukrainian Galician Army;

Yoysef Margoshes, 1866-1955 — writer and researcher, emigrated to America in 1898, left memoirs of Jewish life in Galicia in the nineteenth century;

Róża Melcerowa, 1880-1934 — a feminist, the first Jewish member of the Sejm from 1922 to 1927;

Mieczysław Monderer — voiced one of the characters (Aprikosenkranz) in the radio program Wesoła Lwowska Fala;

Boris Orach, 1921-2011 — export in the history of Galician Jewry, teacher of mathematics. He created the guide map  Jewish Lviv. 100 Addresses ;

Awrum Rozental — rabbi of the synagogue Tsori Gilod, originally from Israel;

Herman Władysław Feldstein, 1863–1935 — Lviv banker, director of the Land Credit Society (Towarzystwo kredytowe ziemskie), one of the directors of the Edison Kinetophone, member of the Lviv City Council, public figure, the first owner of a villa at 7 Hlinky Street;

Adolf Fleischen — voiced one of the characters (Untenbaum) in the radio program Wesoła Lwowska Fala;

Debora Vogel, 1902-1942 — Lviv poet,  writer , philosopher, literary critic;

Wiktor Chajes, 1875-1940 — banker, vice-president of Lviv in 1930-1939;

Krystyna Chiger — the daughter of Igancy and Paulina Chiger, the girl's family  hid in Lviv's sewers , co-author of the memoirs about the Holocaust in Lviv The Girl in the Green Sweater;

Sholem Aleichem (real name Solomon Rabinovich), 1859-1916 — Jewish writer, playwright;

Jojne Sprecher, 1861-1943 — Jewish entrepreneur, owner of the Sprecher Buildings at 8 Mickiewicz Square and 10 Akademicka street;

Szymon Schreiber, 1820-1883 — Orthodox, rabbi.

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1. Szymon An-ski, Tragedia Żydów Galicyjskich w czasie I Wojny Światowej: wrażenia i refleksje z podróży po kraju (Przemyśl: Południowo-Wschodni Instytut Naukowy w Przemyślu, 2010).
2. Majer Bałaban, "Z wczorajszego Lwowa", Chwila, 1925, № 2281, S. 4. 
3. Majer Bałaban, Dzielnica żydowska, jej dzieje i zabytki (Lwów: Towarzystwo Miłośników Przeszłośći Lwowa, 1909).
4. Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
5. Mirosław Łapot, "Edukacja dziewcząt żydowskich w Szkole Ludowej im. Abrahama Kohna we Lwowie (1844-1914)", Prace Naukowe Akademii Im. Jana Długosza w Częstochowie. Pedagogika, 2015, № 24, 483–503. https://doi.org/10.16926/p.2015.24.38
6. Joseph Margoshes, A world apart: A memoir of Jewish life in Nineteenth Century Galicia (Academic Studies Press, 2010).
7. Yoel Mastboym, Galitsiye (Varshe, 1928).
8. Kondrat Matyjaszek, Produkcja przestrzeni żydowskiej w dawnej i współczesnej Polsce (Kraków: Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac Naukowych Universitas, 2019).
9. Roman Pelczar, "Sieć Szkół Niemiecko-żydowskich w Galicji w Latach 1774–1873" Uwarunkowania i Dynamika Rozwoju. Kultura-Przemiany-Edukacja, 2016, T. 4, 13–40. https://doi.org/10.15584/kpe.2016.4.2 
10. Markian Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, public space, and politics in the Galician Capital: 1772-1914 (Purdue University Press, 2009).
11. Kazimierz Redziński, "Studenci żydowscy we Lwowie w latach 1918–1939", Prace Naukowe Akademii im. Jana Długosza w Częstochowie. Pedagogika, 2016, T. XXV, 581–601.
12. Jeffrey Shandler, ed., Awakening lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 2002).
13. Joshua Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
14. Debora Vogel, "Lwowska Juderia. Lwów's Jewish Quarter " (1935), trans. by Jordan Lee Schnee. In Geveb. A Journal of Yiddish Studies: https://ingeveb.org/texts-and-translations/lwóws-jewish-quarter 
15. Nancy M. Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria. Oxford University Press, 2017. 
16. Орися Віра, Гліб Солоджук, Інтерактивна картографія: назви у давньому Львові, доступ: https://map.humaniora.ucu.edu.ua 
17. Марія Вовчко, Асиміляційні процеси єврейського населення Галичини у другій половині ХІХ —  на початку ХХ ст., дисертація (Львівський національний університет ім. І. Франка, 2016).
18. Александр Ґранах, Ось іде людина. Автобіографічний роман, пер. з нім. Галина Петросаняк (Київ: Видавництво Жупанського, 2012). 
19. Йозеф Рот, Мандрівка по Галичині: Лемберґ, місто, доступ: http://www.ji.lviv.ua/n6texts/roth2.htm