Sniatyn

For the eponymous town in Russia, see Ksnyatin

Town hall

Sniatyn (Ukrainian: Снятин, Polish: Śniatyń, Armenian: Սնիատին, Hebrew: שניאטין‎) is a city located in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, in western Ukraine along the Prut river. It is the administrative center of the Sniatynsky Raion (district), and is located at around 48°27′0″N 25°34′0″E. The current estimated population is around 10,500 (as of 2001).

The first mention of the town is in 1158. Ksniatyn was named after Kostiantyn Stroslavich, a boyar and general of Yaroslav Osmomysl. The town was given the Magdeburg Rights in 1448. In the interbellum period, it was a rail border crossing between Poland and Romania.

In 1939 Sniatyn was the temporary seat of American embassy in Poland, as the diplomatic personnel abandoned Warsaw after the first Nazi bombings.

Nearly all of Sniatyn's Jewish population was murdered during the Holocaust. Many were shot and buried in the local forest. Some died from disease and starvation in the ghetto. Approximately 1500 people were sent, via railway, to the Nazi Belzec Concentration Camp in Poland.

External links

• SNYATYN, (SNIATYN): A Jewish shtetl from the mid 1500s through the mid 1940s
• A polish-ukrainian project on the history of Sniatyn