Head Wide Open

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Glory That Was Galicia

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Who remembers Galicia? I do! This forgotten heartland of East-Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine and erased from the map, was the home of some of my ancestors. In their honour, I present to the reader a number of potentially interesting facts about Galicia:

After the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Galicia became the largest, most populous and northernmost province of the Austrian Empire, retaining that status until the end of World War I.
The official name of the province was Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator. Auschwitz did not then have negative connotations.
Galicia has been inhabited by the following groups: Alans, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Hungarians, Tatars, Moravians, Poles, Ukrainians, Austrians, Jews, Armenians, Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and Roma.
Political entities that have controlled Galicia include Kievan Rus, Hungary, the Golden Horde, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedish Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the West Ukrainian People's Republic, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the modern states of Poland and Ukraine.
Galician Jewry produced four Nobel prize winners: Isidor Isaac Rabi (physics), Roald Hoffman (chemistry), Georges Charpak (physics) and Shmuel Agnon (literature).
In 1907, four Zionist deputies from Galicia were elected to the Austrian parliament with the electoral support of Ukrainian peasants, becoming the first political representatives of the movement.
The largely forgotten Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918 and 1919 was fought over Eastern Galicia. The Polish army was equipped by the Western allies to fight the Bolsheviks, and countered complaints of misuse by claiming that "all Ukrainians were Bolsheviks or something close to it."
A 1,200 man all-Jewish battalion (Zhydivs’kyy Kurin’ UHA) served in the Ukrainian Galician Army, fighting first the Poles and then the Bolsheviks for the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic.
From 1918 to 1920, the obscure Lemko people united 130 villages to create a Lemko-Rusyn Republic in Western Galicia, aiming for unification with either a non-emergent democratic Russia or Czechoslovakia.
Galitzianers (Galician Jews) were archrivals of the Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews), separated by reputations for emotionalism (the Galitzianers) and intellectualism (Litvaks), as well as the "Gefilte Fish Line;" Galitzianers liked their fish sweet, even going so far as to put sugar in it, while Litvaks preferred theirs to be peppery.
Reflecting the region's poverty, a Polish nickname for Galicia and Lodomeria was Golicja i Głodomeria, loosely translated as Broke- and Hunger-Land. It sounds funnier in Polish.
In the 17th and 18th centuries Eastern Galicia was a hotbed of Sabbatianism, the mystical Jewish heresy that promoted Sabbatai Zevi as the Messiah.
Galicia has a possible Celtic connection: there is speculation the name has linguistic links with similar place names found across Europe and Asia Minor, including Galatia, Gaul and Spanish Galicia.
Famous Galicians include Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss), Pakistan's first ambassador to the UN; Baal Shem Tov (Yisroel ben Eliezer), the founder of Hasidism; Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher; Jacob Frank, false messiah; Stanislaw Lem, science-fiction writer; Ludwig von Mises, famed economist; Wilhelm Reich, psychoanalyist of fascism; Billy Wilder, film director; and Bruno Schulz, writer and literary critic.
Beginning in the 1880s, economic downturn caused mass emigration of the Galician peasantry, as several thousand Poles, Ukrainians, Germans and Jews moved to the United States, Brazil and Canada. Many settled in Western Canada, among them my great-grandfather who arrived in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1882.
The Galician Soviet Socialist Republic (Galician SSR) existed from July 8, 1920 to September 21, 1920 during the Polish-Soviet War. Its national languages, of equal status, were Polish, Ukrainian and Yiddish.
During the Second World War, the Polish Home Army fought the Ukrainian Insurgent Army who fought Soviet partisans who fought Nazis who deported Jews to the general placation of all.