Historical Background and Interviews
I. Ludvipol: A Modem Shtetl Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
of the Slusch in the large village of Wielkie Siedliszcze (large set- tlement, in Polish) — some families, such as Mordechai Velman’s, traced their roots in Ludvipol to 1780 or earlier — but their grave- yard remained in Hovkov. There are rumors of an older graveyard in the Hovkov area, as well. Wielkie Siedliszcze became known as Ludvipol when a Polish nobleman named Siemaszek began to develop the area. A romantic explanation for the name change is that a poritz (Polish landlord, in Yiddish) named Ludwik lived in a palace on a hill there and changed the name to Ludwipol when he married a woman named Paula. The Jews of Ludvipol usually called the town by a Yiddish name, Selishtch Gadol (Big Selishtch), distinguishing it from the small Ukrainian village at its edge, Selishtch. Still, it consisted of only two main streets, two alleys, and a marketplace. Globally speaking, it was no accident that there is definite evi - dence of activity at this time in Jewish settlements like Ludvipol. By the early 1770s, according to historian Adam Zamoyski, four- fifths of all Jews lived in the Polish Commonwealth. 6 Exhilarated by the revolutions in America and France, Poland’s parliament, the Sejm, produced the first written constitution in Eu - rope in 1791. This progressive action angered Poland’s powerful neighbors and the nation soon found itself partitioned and occupied by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Jews and Poles fought together against the partition in a 1794 uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciusko, a Polish nobleman famous for his participation in the American Revolution. But this effort was unsuccessful, as were other uprisings in the nineteenth century in which Poles — and Jews — attempted to free their country. Punish- ment by the occupying powers was extremely harsh; after a failed uprising in the 1830s, the Russians sent thousands of Polish noble families from Volhynia into exile in Siberia and executed thou- sands more Poles at home. The partition lasted for 125 years, until the agreements that ended World War I restored Poland’s indepen- dence in 1918. There were periodic surges of Jewish emigration from the region, especially during the early part of the twentieth
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