The Jews in Brody
A crossroads and a Jewish trade center in the 19th century, the city is considered to be one of the shtetls. It was particularly famous for the Brodersänger or Broder singers, who were among the first to publicly perform Yiddish songs outside of Purim plays and wedding parties.
The promulgation of the May Laws, and the massive exodus of Russian Jews which was its result, took the leaders of Western Jewry completely by surprise. Throughout 1881, hundreds of immigrants kept arriving in Brody daily. Their arrival placed Austrian and German co-religionists in a quandary. The comfortable middle-class Jewish community of Central and Western Europe looked instinctively to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the world's largest and most respected Jewish philanthropic agency, to bring order out of chaos, to cope with the huge influx of newcomers.
| Jews in Brody |
|||||||
| Year | total pop. | Jews | Share | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1869 | 18,700 | 15,138 | 80.9% | ||||
| 1880 | 20,000 | 15,316 | 76.3% | ||||
| 1890 | n. a. | n. a. | n. a. | ||||
| 1900 | 16,400 | 11,854 | 72.1% | ||||
| 1910 | 18,000 | 12,150 | 67.5% | ||||
Read more about this topic: Brody
Famous quotes containing the word jews:
“No doubt Jews are most obnoxious creatures. Any competent historian or psychoanalyst can bring a mass of incontrovertible evidence to prove that it would have been better for the world if the Jews had never existed. But I, as an Irishman, can, with patriotic relish, demonstrate the same of the English. Also of the Irish.... We all live in glass houses. Is it wise to throw stones at the Jews? Is it wise to throw stones at all?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)