“In our village of Werbiwzi there lived about 150 Ukrainian families, among them four Jewish ones”. Alexander Granach’s Memories of His Childhood in Eastern Galicia

Abstract

This article examines Alexander Granach’s autobiographical novel Da geht ein Mensch as a source for Jewish–non-Jewish relations in the Eastern Galician village of Verbivtsi around 1900. Reading Granach’s childhood memories microhistorically and source-critically, it reconstructs village spaces, social hierarchies, and everyday encounters. Particular attention is paid to the close relationship between the Jewish Granach family and their Ukrainian neighbours, the Fedorkiws. The analysis reveals a Jewish peasant self-positioning often obscured in scholarship and presents village life as an ambivalent sphere of proximity, exchange, religious difference, social boundaries, and potential violence.