In Ternopil
The train stopped in Ternopil for three hours. I decided to walk into the city. I had never been to Ternopil before, though the name was familiar to me. I wandered through its streets. Groups of Jews stood around, as if they had time to spare. They were all watching me. They knew everyone who passed through these streets, so they instantly recognized me as a stranger. I approached one of them and asked,
“Where is the restaurant?”
“I’ll take you to one,” the young man replied, and came with me.
The others remained standing, stunned that one of them had seized the opportunity to guide me. It seemed they had all hoped to show me around the city.
As we walked, he said:
“I could tell right away you’re an American.”
“How did you know?”
“Your shoes. How long are you staying in Ternopil?”
“Three hours.”
“Good. I’ll take you through the whole of Ternopil. I’ll show you the city,” he said.
…
In the afternoon, he took me around.
“Here,” he pointed, “a rich Jew used to live. Now a Pole lives here.”
“A very rich Jew lived here too. He still does — but now he’s very poor.”
“Here’s where the pogrom took place.”
“And here, when the Russians entered the city during the war, they slaughtered Jews.”
“Do you see that group of Jews over there? They stand like that for hours, talking.”
“What do they talk about?”
“Everything.”
“Such as?”
“Politics. The next war.”
“What do they say about the next war?”
“They believe,” he told me, “that after the next war, the situation of the Jews will improve.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it can’t get any worse. It must get better. When you arrived, we were just talking about how Poland doesn’t know who to ally with in the next war — France or Germany. See those groups of Jews? All they talk about is politics. And America.”
“What do they say about America?”
“Various things. Mostly good, I think. Like how New York has a Jewish governor. What could be better? How is Governor Lehman doing over there?”
“What does it matter to you that the governor of New York is Jewish?” I asked.
“It means a lot to us. We’re proud of it.”
As he was talking, a man passed by and greeted us.
“You see that man?” he said. “He’s doing well. He has a good old age.”
“And why is he doing so well?” I asked.
“He has two sons. One in America and one in Palestine.”
“And?”
“What could be better? The one in America sends him money. The one in Palestine sends him money. When there was a big crisis in America, the son in Palestine sent money instead. He’s a wealthy man.”
He walked me around the city for several hours. We saw sad places and unhappy Jews.
There was a pogrom here. A formerly rich man lives here. Here there was grief. Here there was trouble.
When it was time to part ways, he asked:
“So, how did you like our city?”
I needed a moment to respond. He didn’t wait — he answered for me:
“What is there to like? It’s a Galician city. It’s not Paris. It’s not London. You won’t see anything grand here — no antiquities, no palaces. Only unhappy Jews.”
This excerpt is taken from a travelogue of impressions and experiences by the renowned journalist Chone Gottesfeld of the New York Yiddish-language newspaper Forverts (Yiddish: פֿאָרווערטס, English: The Forward), published in New York in 1937.
In it, the author recounts a journey to his hometown of Skala, which he had left in 1907. At the time, Skala was an atypical Galician town that had flourished during the Austrian period due to the large number of Hasidic pilgrims visiting local tzaddikim in nearby Chortkiv. However, the town fell into decline during the interwar years.
Gottesfeld, known for his humorous newspaper stories and for plays performed in both New York and Warsaw, offers in this passage an account of his brief stay in Ternopil — a city that once boasted one of the largest Jewish communities in eastern Galicia. According to 1905 statistics, Jews made up half the city’s population. Ternopil’s development was largely tied to its trade with the Russian Empire. In the early nineteenth century, it also became a hub of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, as the first secular schools in Galicia opened there, inspired by the ideas of the German Enlightenment. However, after the end of World War I, the city lost its significance in international trade and never regained its former economic vitality.
The value of this excerpt lies in its portrayal of the condition of Ternopil’s Jews during the interwar period. It includes comparative reflections, examples of collective memory, and insight into the cultural perceptions of Galician Jews regarding life in exile.
This perspective is essential for understanding the mentalities and civic practices that developed among Galician Jewish communities. Since the First World War, Galician immigrants in New York had supported their hometowns in various ways. Initially, they raised funds for war-affected communities in Galicia; later, they established enduring practices to maintain ties with their places of origin. Chone Gottesfeld’s return visit to the town he had left twenty years earlier is one such example of this evolving relationship. Over time — especially following the Second World War — this form of regional identity became enshrined in the melancholic concept of di alte heim (Yiddish: די אַלטע הײם, literally “the old home”). This expression captured the nostalgia of immigrants for their lives before emigration, usually in reference to Central and Eastern Europe.