Jewish
Population of East European Countries
before World War I
Census of 1900 or nearest date
| Austro-Hungarian Empire |
2,079,000 |
| Austria, incl. Bohemia, Polish Galicia, Bukovina: 1,233,000 | |
| Hungary, incl. Slovakia, Ruthenia: 846,000 | |
|
Russian Empire, incl. Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Bessarabia |
4,483,000 |
| Polish province alone: 1,316,000 | |
|
Romania |
267,000 |
Source: Robert Paul Magocsi (comp.), Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle, 1993), p. 109.
The
Largest "Jewish" Cities in Central and Eastern
Europe (including Belorussia and the Ukraine)
around 1900
| City | 1930s | Jewish pop. | Pct. of total |
| Warsaw | Pol. | 219,000 | 32.5 |
| Budapest | Hung. | 166,000 | 23.6 |
| Vienna | Aust. | 147,000 | 8.7 |
| Odessa | Ukr. | 139,000 | 34.4 |
| Łódż | Pol. | 99,000 | 31.8 |
| Berlin | Ger. | 92,000 | 4.6 |
| Wilno/Vilna | Pol. | 64,000 | 41.0 |
| Salonika | Gr. | 60,000 | 57.1 |
| Chişinău/Kishinev | Rom. | 50,000 | 46.0 |
| Minsk | Belo. | 48,000 | 52.3 |
| Iaşi | Rom. | 45,000 | 57.7 |
| Lwów | Pol. | 44,000 | 27.7 |
| Białystok | Pol. | 42,000 | 63.4 |
| Berdichev | Ukr. | 42,000 | 78.0 |
| Bucharest | Rom. | 40,000 | 14.1 |
| Vitebsk | Belo. | 34,000 | 52.4 |
| Daugavpils/Dvinsk | Lat. | 32,000 | 46.0 |
| Kiev | Ukr. | 32,000 | 12.8 |
| Brest-Litovsk | Pol. | 31,000 | 65.8 |
| Zhitomir | Ukr. | 31,000 | 46.6 |
| Poznań | Pol. | 30,000 | 22.2 |
| Kaunas | Lith. | 28,000 | 37.1 |
| Cracow | Pol. | 26,000 | 28.1 |
| Lublin | Pol. | 24,000 | 47.0 |
| Grodno | Pol. | 23,000 | 49.0 |
| Cernăuţi/Czernowitz | Rom. | 22,000 | 31.9 |
| Breslau/Wrocław | Ger. | 20,000 | 5.0 |
| Prague | Cz. | 19,000 | 9.4 |
This chart covers the twenty-five cites in this region with the largest Jewish populations in 1900, plus a few other cities of interest. The second column indicates the country to which the city belonged in the period relevant to us, the 1930s, and the city names are given in the form current in the 1930s (if there is no usual English name).
Adapted from Historical Atlas of East Central Europe, ed. by Paul Robert Magocsi (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993).