Stryy
About an hour south of Lviv and along the highway to Mukachevo, the city of Stryy (also known as Stryj) is where Merry's grandmother came from in 1920 (the family apparently knew it as Strieg). At the time of their departure it was Poland, although it had just become part of the reborn Poland after a bloody struggle between Ukrainian and Polish forces at the conclusion of World War I. We know little about the circumstances of the family's emigration, but from the pages of an excellent book (referenced below) on Jewish life in the region at the time, we know that it was an especially difficult time for Jews, who had enjoyed reasonable freedoms under Austrian rule. The nationalist forces contending for control of Galicia both considered Jews a threat to their plans. There was also the postwar influenza pandemic (which anti-Semites blamed on the Jews).
For background information on the Jewish experience in Galicia between 1898 and 1939, Joachim Schoenfeld's book, Shtetl Memoirs, is indispensable. (See the review of this book by M. Rathaus at amazon.com.) Although the book is centered on the author's experience in his own shtetl of Sniatyn, near Chernivtsi in eastern Galicia, reading the book proved to be essential preparation for understanding the history of Jews in the larger area. There is even some discussion in the latter part of the book about Stryy itself.
The Jewishgen pages on Stryy are also an excellent resource for information.
War memorial standing on the central square of Stryy.
Views of the synagogue, followed by a view of a section of the old Jewish neighborhood directly across the street.
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