Chortkiv ( uk, Чортків; pl, Czortków; yi, ''Chortkov'') is a city in

Chortkiv Raion Chortkiv Raion ( uk, Чортківський район) is a raion in Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine. Its administrative center is the city of Chortkiv. It has a population of On 18 July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukra ...

Ternopil Oblast Ternopil Oblast ( uk, Тернопі́льська о́бласть, translit=Ternopilska oblast; also referred to as Ternopilshchyna, uk, Терно́пільщина, label=none, or Ternopillia, uk, Тернопілля, label=none) is an obl ...

(

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...

) in western

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

. It is the

administrative center An administrative center is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located. In countries with French as administrative language (such as Belgium, Lu ...

of the

(

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivision ...

), housing the district's local administration buildings. Chortkiv hosts the administration of

Chortkiv urban hromada Chortkiv ( uk, Чортків; pl, Czortków; yi, ''Chortkov'') is a city in Chortkiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast (province) in western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chortkiv Raion (district), housing the district's local admini ...

, one of the

hromada A hromada ( uk, територіальна громада, lit=territorial community, translit=terytorialna hromada) is a basic unit of administrative division in Ukraine, similar to a municipality. It was established by the Government of Ukra ...

s of Ukraine. Population: Chortkiv is located in the northern part of the historic region of Galician

Podolia Podolia or Podilia ( uk, Поділля, Podillia, ; russian: Подолье, Podolye; ro, Podolia; pl, Podole; german: Podolien; be, Падолле, Padollie; lt, Podolė), is a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-centra ...

on the banks of the Seret River. In the past Chortkiv was the home of many

Hasidic Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism ( Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of conte ...

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

s; it was a notable

shtetl A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

and had a significant number of

s residing there prior to the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. Today, Chortkiv is a regional commercial and small-scale manufacturing center. Among its architectural monuments is a fortress built in the 16th and 17th centuries as well as historic wooden churches of the 17th and 18th centuries.

History

The first historical mention of Chortkiv dates to 1522, when Polish King

Sigismund I the Old Sigismund I the Old ( pl, Zygmunt I Stary, lt, Žygimantas II Senasis; 1 January 1467 – 1 April 1548) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 until his death in 1548. Sigismund I was a member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, the ...

granted an ownership order for

Jerzy Czortkowski Jerzy is the Polish version of the masculine given name George. The most common nickname for Jerzy is Jurek (), which may also be used as an official first name. Occasionally the nickname Jerzyk may be used, which means " swift" in Polish. Peopl ...

over the town and allowed him to name it after himself—''Czortków''. The small community, numbering at 50 families, were almost all massacred during the Chmielnicki Uprisings of 1648–9. Jewish leadership opposed the resettlement of Jews in Chortkiv until 1705. During that time, the town was also granted

Magdeburg rights Magdeburg rights (german: Magdeburger Recht; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within ...

. However, Chortkiv would later decline in the second half of the 17th century during Ottoman Expansion of central Europe. The town was taken over by

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...

, whose rule lasted 27 years. It was part of the short-lived Turkish

Podolia Eyalet Podolia Eyalet ( ota, Eyalet-i Kamaniçe) was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. Its capital was Kamianets-Podilskyi ( pl, Kamieniec Podolski; ua, Кам’янець-Подільський; tr, Kamaniçe). History In 1672, the Ottoman army, led ...

, which lasted from 1672 to 1699. During this period, it was nahiya centre in Yazlofça sanjak as ''Çortkuv'' (Spelled as ''Chortkoov'' in Turkish). After First Partition of Poland Chortkiv came under

Austro-Hungarian Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1 ...

rule which lasted from 1772 to 1918, during the time of which it was the center of the Chortkiv

Bezirk The German term ''Bezirk'' (plural ''Bezirke'', derived from la, circulus, "circle") translated as "district" can refer to the following types of administrative divisions: * ''Stadtbezirk'', a subdivision of a city in the sense of a borough (e. ...

except brief Russian rule between 1809 and 1815 as part of Tarnopol Governorate. On June 8, 1919 the

Ukrainian Galician Army Ukrainian Galician Army ( uk, Українська Галицька Армія, translit=Ukrayins’ka Halyts’ka Armiya, UHA), was the Ukrainian military of the West Ukrainian National Republic during and after the Polish-Ukrainian War. It w ...

broke for couple months through the Polish front at Chortkiv and began the

Chortkiv offensive The Chortkiv offensive ( uk, Чортківська офензива) (7–28 June 1919), sometimes also referred to as the June Offensive, was a surprise military operation by the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) on the newly founded Second Polish ...

. Soon afterwards, the town was seized by the Poles. It was ceded to sovereign Poland in the Peace Treaty of Riga between Poland, Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine, and remained part of the Tarnopol Voivodeship of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

until the

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subs ...

in September 1939. In 1931, the town had 19,037 inhabitants, 10504 were Polish

Roman Catholics The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, 4860 were Ukrainian and Polish

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, and 3633 were Ukrainian. Chortkiv was an important garrison of the Polish

Border Defence Corps The Border Protection Corps ( pl, Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza, KOP) was a military formation of the Second Polish Republic that was created in 1924 to defend the country's eastern borders against armed Soviet incursions and local bandits. Other b ...

Brigade "Podole", whose commandant from 1935 to 1938 was General

Stefan Rowecki Stefan Paweł Rowecki (pseudonym: ''Grot'', "Spearhead", hence the alternate name, Stefan Grot-Rowecki; 25 December 1895 – 2 August 1944) was a Polish general, journalist and the leader of the Armia Krajowa. He was murdered by the Gestapo in ...

. Furthermore, it was home to the 36th Reserve Infantry Division. The town was annexed by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

from September 17, 1939 until June 1941. Its Polish inhabitants, particularly students of the local high school, organized a failed uprising in January 1940, which would serve as the first Polish uprising of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. From 1941-1944 it was annexed to Nazi Germany. After the defeat of the Nazis by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

in 1944, the town returned to Soviet control until in 1991 it became part of independent

. The Jewish residents were persecuted and deported as part of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

. The surviving Polish residents of the town were transferred to the

Recovered Territories The Recovered Territories or Regained Lands ( pl, Ziemie Odzyskane), also known as Western Borderlands ( pl, Kresy Zachodnie), and previously as Western and Northern Territories ( pl, Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne), Postulated Territories ( pl, Z ...

in the immediate postwar period (see

Polish population transfers (1944–1946) The Polish population transfers in 1944–1946 from the eastern half of prewar Poland (also known as the expulsions of Poles from the Kresy macroregion), were the forced migrations of Poles toward the end and in the aftermath of World War II. ...

). Due to heavy destruction of

Ternopil Ternópil ( uk, Тернопіль, Ternopil' ; pl, Tarnopol; yi, טאַרנאָפּל, Tarnopl, or ; he, טארנופול (טַרְנוֹפּוֹל), Tarnopol; german: Tarnopol) is a city in the west of Ukraine. Administratively, Terno ...

, in 1944 Chortkiv served as a regional seat.Snitovsky, O.
Five centuries of Ternopil. The city of Hetman Jan and mason Leontiy
'.

Ukrinform The National News Agency of Ukraine ( uk, Українське національне інформаційне агентство), or Ukrinform ( uk, Укрінформ), is a state information and news agency, and international broadcaster of ...

. 28 August 2015 In January 1989 the population was 26 681 people.Чортков // Большой энциклопедический словарь (в 2-х тт.). / редколл., гл. ред. А. М. Прохоров. том 2. М., "Советская энциклопедия", 1991. In January 2013 the population was 29 640 people. In 2019, at the 40-meter height of the tower of the

Saint Stanislaus church in Chortkiv Saint Stanislaus church ( uk, Костел святого Станіслава) is a Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in Chortkiv of the Chortkiv urban hromada of the Chortkiv Raion of the Ternopil Oblast. History On February 22, 1610, the Rus' v ...

, archaeologist, researcher of fortifications and antiquities Volodymyr Dobrianskyi discovered a detonator of a shrapnel projectile, according to its flight trajectory determined that the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 7th cannon regiments (64 guns) under the command of Ataman Kirill Karas during the

(June 7–28, 1919) were stationed in the woods west of the village of

Shmankivtsi Shmankivtsi ( uk, Шманьківці, pl, Szmańkowce) is a village in Ukraine, Ternopil Oblast, Chortkiv Raion, Zavodske settlement hromada. It is the administrative center of the former Shmankivska village council. Shmankivtsi includes the ham ...

in the Chortkiv district. Until 18 July 2020, Chortkiv was designated as a city of oblast significance and did not belong to Chortkiv Raion even though it was the center of the raion. As part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Ternopil Oblast to three, the city was merged into Chortkiv Raion. The former Chortkiv Air Base is located nearby.

Climate

People from Chortkiv

* Kateryna Rubchakova (1881–1919), Ukrainian actress and singer * Maria Maciyivska (born 1918), first soprano Leeds Church Toronto, Ontario 1954 - 2008. * Sacha Blonder () (1909-1949), Ecole de Paris painter * Waclaw Czerwinski - Polish engineer and pilot, pioneer of Polish gliding, * Jerzy Czortkowski, founder of Chortkiv * Bernard Hausner (1874–1938), rabbi, diplomat and member of the Sejm *

Pinchas Horowitz Rabbi Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz (c. 1731, Chortkiv – July 1, 1805, Frankfort-on-the-Main), also known as the Baal Hafla'ah, was a rabbi and Talmudist. Life The descendant of a long line of rabbinical ancestors and the son of Rabbi Zvi Hirsc ...

(1731–1805),

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as '' semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form o ...

and

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

ist * Jerzy Janicki (1928-2007) – Polish writer and reporter, * Edward Kmiecik (born 1928) - Polish painter, * Ireneusz Opacki (1933-2005) – academic of the Katowice Silesian University, expert on Polish literature, * Jerzy Przystawa (born 1939) - Polish scientist, physicist, * Alfred Trawinski - major of the

Polish Army The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stre ...

, doctor and professor of Medicine Academy of Lviv, * Tadeusz Wazewski (1896-1972) – Polish scholar, mathematician, professor of

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University ( Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...

, *

Shmelke of Nikolsburg Shmuel Shmelke HaLevi Horowitz of Nikolsburg (Yiddish: שמואל שמעלקי הלוי הורוויץ פון ניקאלשפורג, ; 1726 – April 28, 1778) also known as the Rebbe Reb Shmelke was an early Hasidic master and kabbalist, who is am ...

(1746–1778), one of the great early

Chasidic Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of contem ...

Rebbe A Rebbe ( yi, רבי, translit=rebe) or Admor ( he, אדמו״ר) is the spiritual leader in the Hasidic movement, and the personalities of its dynasties.Heilman, Samuel"The Rebbe and the Resurgence of Orthodox Judaism."''Religion and Spiritu ...

s *

Karl Emil Franzos Karl Emil Franzos (25 October 184828 January 1904) was a popular Austrian novelist of the late 19th century. His works, both reportage and fiction, concentrate on the multi-ethnic corner of Galicia, Podolia and Bukovina, now largely in western U ...

(1848–1904),

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n novelist * Leopold Levytskyi (1906–1973), Ukrainian painter * Perla (Penina) Richter Feldschu (1900-1943), Warsaw musicologist, wife of Zionist activist Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem)Laurence Weinbaum "'Shaking the Dust Off". The Story of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Forgotten Chronicler, Ruben Feldschu (Ben Shem)" Jewish Political Studies Review 22:3-4 (Fall 2010)
/ref> * Bernard (Berl) Hausner (1874-1938) father of

Gideon Hausner Gideon Hausner ( he, גדעון האוזנר, 26 September 1915 – 15 November 1990) was an Israeli jurist and politician. Between 1960 and 1963, he served as Attorney General and was later elected to the Knesset and served in the cabinet. Haus ...

. Gideon was the Prosecutor of Adolf Eichmann, and Attorney General of Israel. Bernard was a Rabbi in Lemberg, Polish consul to Palestine, and Zionist. Migrated to Israel in 1927.

Gallery

File:Ратуша, Чортків.jpg, Town hall File:Чортков. Новая ратуша..jpg, City hall File:Чортків4497.jpg, Assumption Church in Chortkiv File:Чортков. Бывший Дворец юстиции..jpg, Historic county court building File:Chortkiv Polkova church.JPG, Ruins of Chortkiv Castle and Regimental Church File:St Stanislav Church in Chortkiv.jpg, St. Stanislaus Church File:Chortkiv Synagogue.JPG, Hasidic synagogue of Chortkiv File:Chortkiv Railway Station.JPG, Railway station File:Чортков. Дом Культуры..jpg, Chortkiv House of Culture File:Chortkiv-stara-ratusha-10081392.jpg, City centre and the old Town Hall in Chortkiv File:Чортків спортивний (1938 рік).jpg, Football Match at Stadium in the city Chortkiv, 1938 File:Полкова церква P1190065.jpg, Peter and Paul Cathedral

References

8. Czortków KehilaLinks Site - JewishGen http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Suchostaw/sl_czortkow.htm

External links