When Hannah gets transported to another time and place during the Seder, she meets Gitl and Schmuel. Gitl and Shmuel are brother and sister, and aunt and uncle to Chaya. Chaya is Hannah’s Hebrew name. Gitl and Shmuel live in a “shtetl” in the country in Poland. Shtetls are “the small villages in which Jews lived for centuries in Eastern Europe.” (Source 1). When Chaya’s parents married, they moved to the city of Lublin which...
When Hannah gets transported to another time and place during the Seder, she meets Gitl and Schmuel. Gitl and Shmuel are brother and sister, and aunt and uncle to Chaya. Chaya is Hannah’s Hebrew name. Gitl and Shmuel live in a “shtetl” in the country in Poland. Shtetls are “the small villages in which Jews lived for centuries in Eastern Europe.” (Source 1). When Chaya’s parents married, they moved to the city of Lublin which is located in Eastern Europe. Her parents died there of disease, and Chaya was very ill for a long period of time. Gitl says,
"I swear, Shmuel, city living does damage to the soul. When our brother Moishe and his wife --- may they rest in peace ---left for Lublin, they had happy souls.” (pg 29)
The name of the village where Gitl and Shmuel live is never specifically mentioned, the characters just refer to it as “our shtetl”. On her first day in the other world, Schmuel is getting married to Fayge, and they have to travel to her village of Viosk for the wedding ceremony. Viosk no longer exists, but you will find Lublin, the city, on the map and may visit there today. The article below documents the structure of the shtetls. It also says,
" And while shtetl life was inexorably changed by industrialization and modernization, it was destroyed by the Holocaust. Thus, shtetl life is sanctified with an aura of martyrdom." (See Source 1)
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