Galician Jews or Galitzianers (Yiddish: גאַליציאַנער, romanized: Galitsianer) are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating and developed in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Bukovina from contemporary western Ukraine (Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Ternopil Oblasts) and from south-eastern Poland (Subcarpathian and Lesser Poland).

Galicia proper, which was inhabited by Ruthenians, Poles and Jews, became a royal province within Austria-Hungary after the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century.

[2] Most of Galician Jewry lived poorly, largely working in small workshops and enterprises, and as craftsmen—including tailors, carpenters, hat makers, jewelers and opticians.

Under Habsburg rule, Galicia's Jewish population increased sixfold, from 144,000 in 1776 to 872,000 in 1910, due to a high birth rate and a steady stream of refugees fleeing pogroms in the neighboring Russian Empire.

[7] Both Ukrainian and pro-Ukrainian Jewish armed units suffered significant losses as they retreated from Galicia before the army of General Edward Rydz-Śmigły.

"[10] Reportedly, the Council of Ministers of the West Ukrainian People's Republic provided assistance to Jewish victims of the Polish pogrom in Lviv, wrote Alexander Prusin.

[11] Nevertheless, as noted by Robert Blobaum from West Virginia University, many more pogroms and assaults against Galician Jews were perpetrated by the Ukrainian side in rural areas and other towns.

[12] Between 22 and 26 March 1919, during massacres in Zhytomyr (Jitomir), between 500 and 700 Jews lost their lives at the hands of armed men from the Ukrainian republican army led by Symon Petliura.

[15] The rights of minorities in the newly reborn Second Polish Republic were protected by a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty signed by President Paderewski.

They, in turn, held the Litvaks in disdain, derogatively referring to them as tseylem-kop ("cross heads"),[21] or Jews assimilated to the point of being Christian.