The Shtetl As It Was

Two kilometers outside the town, at the edge of a wood, a giant stone erupts from the earth. It is a tall, broad, gigantic boulder. From afar its smooth and semi-circular form gives it the appearance of a huge, bald human head. A number of smaller stony mounds lie scattered about, like dwarfs at the foot of the gigantic boulder. Nature itself apparently determined the name of the town, since in Slavic languages skala means boulder.

Over generations a settlement grew here. The soil of the Podolia ^[5] region is fertile and from earliest times drew large numbers of settlers. The first colony quickly grew into a hamlet, the hamlet into a village, the village into a small town, and finally into the bigger town, Skalat, which was eventually surrounded by seventy-two dependent villages. Among forests and fields, between valleys and meadows, the huts grew, the people multiplied, and, under the biblical mandate: by the sweat of your brow people toiled and their labor provided sustenance.

The river Zbrocz flows through the area and, some twelve kilometers from Skalat, marks the Russian border. It passes through Podwolczyska, Tarnorude and many other villages. The town Skalat, in the Tarnopol district of Galicia, formerly part of Poland, has its own history of battles and victories, of Tartar and Cossack invasions, of fire and blood.

Four massive XVII Century towers, with red tile roofs, rise from each comer of the surrounding huge town wall. Nearby stand rows of small, old fashioned, twisted little houses. In a few places one also sees separate huts, scattered chaotically and bent toward the earth. In the central marketplace, opposite the church, a handful of hunchbacked houses huddle along the Picynia Section which, itself, is a remnant of a great fire some fifty years earlier, when only this one little area miraculously survived. Along it are spread the small adobe houses, leaning against one another and exposing the thickly-growing moss through their rotted out shingle roofs. Here also are the few dingy, large driveway houses with clumsy, diamond-shaped roofs, and broad overhangs supported by posts. Here and there, on the main street of the town, are a few single-story houses with grey zinc roofs.

In contrast to them stand the buildings of the shul ^[6], the city hall, the post office, the courthouse and, at the town's outskirts, the large Sokol ^[7]. These buildings, a blend of the highest achievements of modern technology and provincial architecture, stand proudly as though they were skyscrapers. The Roman Catholic Church in the marketplace, the Greek Catholic Church in the Gmina Section and the shul in the Bath area stand out prominently from all the other buildings. They inform all who approach from afar that here in Skalat, God is worshiped by three religions: those of the Jews, Ukrainians and Poles who have lived here, side-by-side, for hundreds of years. Old traditions were woven into newer times. The three groups bought, sold, bartered, conducted commerce and lent each other money. Whatever different historical or political winds might have blown outside, they, more or less, got along among themselves.

In 1939, out of approximately 8,000 inhabitants of Skalat and its peripheral areas (Mantiawa, Preczepinka, Krzywe, Nowy-Swiat and Ksiezy Kat), some sixty percent were Jews who lived, mostly, in the center of the town. The Jewish population consisted of some small traders, craftsmen, businessmen, and a few professionals and officials, There were also students of the Torah, beggars of the older generation and ordinary unemployed do-nothings. It can be said that in its high rate of unemployed Jews, Skalat was a typical shtetl. It was one of the oldest Jewish shtetls in Galicia, where Jews had settled in the sixteenth century or earlier.

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At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, there was mass migration to America. due to poverty, hunger and the lack of opportunity. Further impetus was provided by anti-Semitism and the wave of pogroms in Russia. In later years, hundreds of Skalat families received aid from their relatives overseas. This helped to ease the poverty in the town. Skalat landsleit ^[8] established a large orphanage named after one Louis Rosenblatt. They also assisted in setting up the co-operative bank and the free-loan society which helped the Jews through critical times.

Jewish life flourished in Skalat. Institutions and organizations participated actively in the town's social, cultural, religious and political activities. Though Skalat was nominally an orthodox. Hassidic town, the younger generation followed the paths of progress and national, secular education in addition to religious instructions. All political parties, from the extreme left to the extreme right, were organized and exerted their influence on the young. The shtetl was no different from other Polish towns and the people here engaged in a daily struggle for existence and for human rights.

According to the rhythms of history, the tangle of world politics, and the constant changes in political regimes, the Jews of Skalat experienced times both good and bad. At first there was the old Polish kingdom, followed (in 1792) ^[9] by the Austrian rule, then in rapid succession came the First World War (in 1914), the Ukrainian “Lightning War” (of 1918-1919) and the Polish restoration of(1919-l939). With the advent of the Second World War came the (1939-1941) Soviet occupation of Galicia, then the (1941-1944) German occupation with its tragic consequences. Finally there was the return of the Soviets (in 1944), but this time to a town without a Jewish population.

On its fateful, painful road, Jewish Skalat experienced many regimes and all sorts of troubles: insecurity, hunger, tortures and persecutions. Yet it survived the worst times and revived. It remained for the German madman to become the Angel of Death: the executioner of this shtetl and of all the shtetls of Poland. Now it is time to relate the facts of the life-struggle and destruction of Skalat!

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