Galicia (*Yiddish, Galitsye) is a region in southeastern *Poland and northwestern *Ukraine. Part of the old Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, Galicia entered *Habsburg Austria as a result of the Polish partitions beginning in 1772 (both its borders and the name itself, Galizien, were Austrian constructions). The region remained the Habsburg Empire's largest crown land, or province, until the empire's collapse in 1918, at which time it ceased to exist as a political entity.

At the time of its annexation, Galicia included nearly 200,000 Jews; the Jewish population increased to 575,000 in 1869 (10.6% of the population) and 873,000 in 1910 (10.9%). Galicia was an ethnically divided territory. The western part was overwhelmingly Polish with a significant Jewish minority (*9%). In contrast, Poles constituted the elites in the east, but numbered only 20% population, which was about 13% Jewish and 65% “Ruthenian” (the Austrian designation of later-day Ukrainians). Jews typically cconstituted more than a quarter of the population of Galicia's two largest cities, Lemberg (Lwów) and Krakóow, and formed either a majority or a plurality in scores of other towns, including Brody, Buczacz, Stanislau, Kolomea, and Drohobycz. As a result, Jews often played a critical role in elections.

*Yiddish speaking and overwhelmingly commercial in a Slavic, agrarian environment, Galician Jewry largely retained its traditional *Eastern European character throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.