Shtetl

A shtetl (Yiddish: שטעטל, diminutive form of Yiddish shtot שטאָט, "town", pronounced very similarly to the South German diminutive "Städtle", "little town"; cf. Middle High German: stetelîn, stetlîn, stetel) was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls (Yiddish plural: שטעטלעך, shtetlekh) were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania. A larger city, like Lemberg (Lviv) or Czernowitz, was called a shtot (Yiddish: שטאָט); a smaller village was called a dorf (דאָרף‎).