shtetl: Quick Facts

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Facts

Also Known As	shtetel • shtetls • שטעטל • shtetlekh

Photos

Four Jewish men in traditional dress sit on a bench outside a shop in Krasilov, Ukraine, circa 1916-17, engaged in conversation.

Map highlighting the Pale of Settlement, the region in the western Russian Empire where Jewish residency was legally allowed from 1835 to 1917. The area is shaded in orange, covering parts of present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova, with major cities such as Warsaw, ?odz, Lublin, Bia?ystok, Hrodna, Kyiv, Odesa, and Chisinau marked. An inset map shows the same region within modern European country borders for reference.

Tower of Faces at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with three-story walls covered in hundreds of family photographs of residents of the Eyshishok shtetl.

Black-and-white photo of a Jewish family outside a wooden house in Chelm, Poland, circa 1916-18; children stand with a goat, two are barefoot, and an older woman stands in the doorway.

Chaim Topol as Tevye and Sara Kestelman as Golde sit together on stage in costume during a performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the London Palladium.

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