On July, 30, 2015, at 6.30 pm, the Center for Urban History hosts a lecture on "Jewish Soldiers in the First World War" as part of an exhibition project. A historian Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern will use Galicia as an example to show how military actions and occupation reflected on the lives of local Jews and Jewish soldiers on both sides of the front.
Russian military occupation of East Galicia was the beginning of end for Jewish life in the eastern areas of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Irritated by failure of 1915 campaign, Russian occupation regime was quick who to find fault with – the Jews. Unlike Russian empire citizens, Galician Jews were emancipated middle class representatives who mostly spoke Yiddish, while the interim government treated it as German. Therefore, Russian military authorities accused Jews of a collective treason and started numerous ambush to capture thousands of Jews and send them to central Russian provinces in the role of ‘official’ hostages. The researcher suggests we look at the problem of Galicia of 1915 from two points of view. On the one hand, the situation can be viewed from the position of local citizens and occupational government, while on the other hand, we could listen to the voices of subalterns, the Jews who were part of the armies of two states at variance.
