DROGOBYCH. City in Ukrainian S.S.R., formerly in Poland and Austria. Information about individual Jewish contractors of the salt mines in Drogobych dates from the beginning of the 15^th century. Some of them settled in the city, eventually forming a small community (kehillah). In 1578, however, Drogobych obtained the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis authorizing the exclusion of Jews from its precincts. Although a number of Jews were subsequently found living in the vicinity, their settlement was not permanent until the end of the 17th century, enabled by royal patronage. All commerce and crafts were then concentrated in Jewish hands. Jewish guilds were formed and the records evidence the friction that existed between them and the Christian guilds of the city, as also between the citizens of Drogobych and the Jewish inhabitants.

    After Drogobych passed to Austria in 1772, economic oppression, heavy taxation, and government interference in communal affairs had an adverse effect on the Jewish position. It improved in the 19^th century, however, especially with the exploitation of the mineral resources of Drogobych; the salt industry was also a Jewish enterprise. The first attempts to prospect for oil and its extraction were made in Drogobych by a Jew, Heck, in 1810, and in 1858-59 a refinery was constructed by A. Schreiner in nearby Borislav at the same time as the industry was developed in the United States. Drogobych Jews took a prominent part in oil extraction and refining, and its export was mainly in Jewish hands. Many families made fortunes in this sector. The take-over of the smaller companies by big enterprises at the end of the 19^th century, however, badly hit the Jewish concerns, and the economic position of the community began to deteriorate. After World War I it became impoverished. Hasidim and the Haskalah movement spread to Drogobych at the end of the 18^th century. A German biweekly printed in Hebrew characters, the Drohobitzer Zeitung, was published between 1883 and World War I, and brought out several Hebrew supplements entitled Ziyyon (1886-87, 1897). Toward the end of Hapsburg rule the constituency of Drogobych was represented in the Austrian parliament by a Jewish deputy, an assimilationist with sympathies for Poland, who had the backing of the authorities. Drogobych remained the center of the Galician kotel from the 1890s until the Holocaust. Hayyim Shapira,, the last zaddik in Drogobych, was the first of the hasidic zaddikim to join officially the Zionist movement. He went to Erez Israel in 1922. The Jewish population of Drogobych totaled 1,924 in 1765, 2,492 in 1812, 8,055 in 1865, 8,683 in 1900, and 11,833 (about 44% of the total population) in 1921.