Until the Holocaust, Jews were a significant part of the population of Eastern Europe. Outside Poland, the largest population was in the European part of the USSR, especially Ukraine (1.5 million in the 1930s), but major populations also existed in Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Here are lists of some prominent East European Jews, arranged by country of origin.
List of Czech, Bohemian, Moravian and Slovak Jews
List of Hungarian Jews
List of Polish Jews
List of Romanian Jews
List of Ukrainian Jews
List of Jews born in the former Russian Empire (and the former Soviet Union)
Max Black, philosopher
Misha Black, designer; brother of Max Black
Bella Davidovich, pianist
Gavril Abramovich Ilizarov, Soviet physician, known for inventing the Ilizarov apparatus
Garry Kasparov, world chess champion
Lev Landau, physicist, Nobel Prize (1962)
Lev Nussimbaum, writer (a.k.a. Kurban Said)
Vladimir Rokhlin, mathematician
Lev Simonovich Berg, geographer & zoologist
Gary Bertini, conductor
Bronfman family
Samuel Bronfman, founder of Seagram
Samuel Cohen, composer of hatTiqwah
I. A. L. Diamond, comedy writer
Meir Dizengoff, politician
Lazar Dubinovski, painter
Giora Feidman, musician
William F. Friedman, cryptographer
A. N. Frumkin, electrochemist
Mikhail Gershenzon, historian
Roman Grinberg, musician
Nachum Gutman, painter
Idel Ianchelevici, sculptor
Mona May Karff, chess player
Boris Katz, artificial intelligence researcher
Gary Koshnitsky, chess player
Abba Ptachya Lerner, economist
Avigdor Liberman, politician
Oleg Maisenberg, concert pianist
Lewis Milestone, director
Sigmund Mogulesko, singer, actor, composer
Sacha Moldovan, painter
Moishe Oysher, Yiddish singer
Mark Pester, violinist, conductor, teacher
Boris Polak (born 1954), Israeli world champion and Olympic sport shooter
Mendel Portugali, An Hashomer founder
Sir Michael Postan, historian
Anton Rubinstein, pianist
Joseph ben Yehuda Leib Shapotshnick, rabbi
Volodia Teitelboim
Andy Zaltzman, British comedian
Mark Zeltser, concert pianist
Meir Zorea, general in the Israel Defense Forces
Joseph Goldberger, discovered cure for pellagra
Juraj Herz, actor and film director
Ignác Kolisch, chess player
Peter Lorre, actor
Robert Maxwell, media mogul
Ivan Reitman, film director
Richard Réti, chess player
Herman Steiner, chess player
Rudolf Vrba, pharmacologist
Alfred Wetzler, writer
List of East European Jews Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA