A band of torch-bearing Cossack soldiers on horseback ride through the village, setting it ablaze a group of mustachioed cats follow in their wake and terrorize the mouse population. That’s a lot of information to bake into the opening of a kids’ cartoon movie, but even those of us who haven’t studied Imperial Russian history can easily understand what happens next. The Pale was also the site of anti-Semitic pogroms, or violent riots directed at a certain demographic, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. This area allowed permanent residency by Jews-the region outside the Pale’s borders generally prohibited it except in special cases-but the Jewish families who lived there experienced poverty and conscription into the Tsar’s army. Shostka is an actual village that was established by Ukrainian Cossacks who were based there and, in the late 19 th century, existed in an area known as the Pale of Settlement. To the 33-year-old me, however, these simple clues tell me everything I need to know to get this story started. To the three-year-old me, neither the village’s name nor the surname of either family meant anything, nor did Papa wishing his family “Happy Hanukkah!” twice apparently this also meant little to Siskel and Ebert at the time. In 1885 in the village of Shostka, Russia, stands the house of the Moskowitz family at its base lives the Mousekewitz family, composed of Mama and Papa, Fievel, Tanya and an unnamed baby, in their cozy abode.
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