, location =
Lwów
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
,
Zamarstynów
Zamarstyniv ( uk, Замарстинів, pl, Zamarstynów) is one of the boroughs of the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. It is notable as the main site of the infamous Lemberg Ghetto.
The name of the modern borough comes from the original vi ...
(
German-occupied Poland)
, date = 8 November 1941 to June 1943
, incident_type = Imprisonment, mass shootings, forced labor, starvation, forced abortions and sterilization
, perpetrators =
, participants =
, organizations =
SS
, camp =
Belzec extermination camp
Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total ...
Janowska concentration camp
, ghetto =
, victims = 120,000 Polish Jews
, survivors = 823
, witnesses =
, documentation =
, memorials =
, notes =
The Lwów Ghetto (german: Ghetto Lemberg; pl, getto we Lwowie) was a
Nazi ghetto
Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities furtheri ...
in the city of Lwów (now
Lviv
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
,
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...
) in the territory of Nazi-administered
General Government
The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
in
German-occupied Poland.
The
ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished ...
, set up in the second half of 1941, was liquidated in June 1943; all its inhabitants who survived prior killings were deported to the
Bełżec extermination camp
Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the " Final Solution" which in tota ...
and the
Janowska concentration camp.
Background
Lviv
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
(Polish: Lwów) was a multicultural city just before World War II, with a population of 312,231. The city's 157,490 ethnic Poles constituted just over 50 percent of the population, with Jews at 32 percent (99,595) and Ukrainians at 16 percent (49,747). On 28 September 1939, after the joint Soviet-German invasion, the USSR and Germany signed the
German–Soviet Frontier Treaty, which assigned about 200,000 km
2 (77,000 sq mi) of Polish territory inhabited by 13.5 million people of all nationalities to the Soviet Union. Lviv was then
annexed to the Soviet Union. At the time of the
German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, about 160,000 Jews lived in the city; the number had swelled by tens of thousands due to the arrival of Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland in late 1939. All along the German-Soviet front, the Soviet secret police (the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
) engaged in mass murder of prisoners, in what later became known as the
NKVD prisoner massacre
The NKVD prisoner massacres were a series of mass executions of political prisoners carried out by the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, across Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic stat ...
s. According to estimates by contemporary historians, the number of victims in
Western Ukraine
Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( uk, Західна Україна, Zakhidna Ukraina or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austr ...
was probably between 10,000 and 40,000, with at least two-thirds of them ethnic Ukrainians.
German invasion and pogroms
Lviv
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
was occupied by the German
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...
in the early hours of 30 June 1941. That day, Jews were
press-ganged by the Germans to remove bodies of the
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
's victims from the three local jails. During the morning of 30 June, an ''ad hoc''
Ukrainian People's Militia
Ukrainian People's Militsiya or the Ukrainian National Militsiya ( uk, Українська Народна Міліція), was a paramilitary formation created by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the General Government territory ...
was formed in the city. It included OUN activists who had moved in from
Krakow with the Germans, OUN members who lived in Lviv, and former Soviet policemen—who had either decided to switch sides or who were OUN members that had infiltrated the Soviet police. A full-blown
pogrom
A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...
began on the next day, 1 July. Jews were taken from their apartments, made to clean streets on their hands and knees, or perform rituals that identified them with Communism. Jews continued to be brought to the three prisons, first to exhume the bodies and then to be killed. Sub-units of
Einsatzgruppe C arrived on 2 July, at which point violence escalated further. The SS
death squad
A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are f ...
conducted a series of mass-murder operations which continued for the next few days.
A second
pogrom
A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...
took place in the last days of July 1941 and was named the "Petlura Days" after the assassinated Ukrainian leader and pogromist
Symon Petliura
Symon Vasylyovych Petliura ( uk, Си́мон Васи́льович Петлю́ра; – May 25, 1926) was a Ukrainian politician and journalist. He became the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army and the President of the Ukrainian Peop ...
.
This pogrom was organized by the Nazis, but carried out by the Ukrainians, as a prologue to the total annihilation of the Jewish population of Lwów. Somewhere in the neighborhood of between 5,000–7,000 Jews were brutally beaten and more than 2,000 murdered
in this massacre.
Richard Breitman Richard David Breitman, born in 1947, is an American historian best known for his study of the Holocaust.
Richard Breitman is an American historian who has written extensively on modern German history, the Holocaust, American immigration and refuge ...
. ''Himmler and the 'Terrible Secret' among the Executioners.'' Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 26, No. 3/4, The Impact of Western Nationalisms: Essays Dedicated to Walter Z. Laqueur on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (Sep., 1991), pp. 431-451 In addition, some 3,000 persons, mostly Jews, were executed in the municipal stadium by the German military.
The ghetto
Following the Nazi takeover, SS-''
Brigadeführer''
Fritz Katzmann
Fritz Katzmann, also known as Friedrich Katzmann, (6 May 1906 – 19 September 1957) was a German SS and Police Leader during the Nazi era. He perpetrated genocide in the cities of Kattowitz (today, Katowice), Radom, Lemberg (today, Lviv), Danzi ...
became the
SS and Police Leader (SSPF) of Lwów.
On his orders the Ghetto called ''Jüdischer Wohnbezirk'' was established on 8 November 1941 in the northern part of the city. Some 80,000 Jews were ordered to move there by 15 December 1941 and all Poles and Ukrainians to move out.
Zamarstynów (now Zamarstyniv) neighborhood was designated to form the Jewish quarter. Before the beginning of World War II it was one of the poorest suburbs of Lwów. German police also began a series of "selections" in an operation called "Action under the bridge" - 5,000 elderly and sick Jews were shot as they crossed under the rail bridge on Pełtewna Street (called ''bridge of death'' by the Jews) moving slowly toward the gate. Eventually, between 110,000 and 120,000 Jews were forced into the new ghetto. The living conditions there were extremely poor, coupled with severe overcrowding. For example, food rations allocated to the Jews were estimated to equal only 10% of the German and 50% of the Ukrainian or Polish rations.
[Filip Friedman, ''Zagłada Żydów lwowskich'' (Extermination of the Jews of Lwów) .]
The Germans established a Jewish police force called the ''Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst Lemberg'' wearing dark blue Polish police uniforms from before World War II, but with the Polish insignia replaced by a
Magen David
The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles.
A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorati ...
and the new letters J.O.L. in various positions on their uniform. They were given rubber truncheons. Their ranks numbered from 500 to 750 policemen.
The Jewish police force answered to the Jewish National city council known as the Judenrat, which in turn answered to the Gestapo.
Deportations
The Lemberg Ghetto was one of the first to have Jews transported to the
death camps
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. T ...
as part of
Aktion Reinhard
or ''Einsatz Reinhard''
, location = Occupied Poland
, date = October 1941 – November 1943
, incident_type = Mass deportations to extermination camps
, perpetrators = Odilo Globočnik, Hermann Höfle, Richard Thomalla, Erwin ...
. Between 16 March and 1 April 1942, approximately 15,000 Jews were taken to the Kleparów railway station and deported to the
Belzec extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...
. Following these initial deportations, and death by disease and random shootings, around 86,000 Jews officially remained in the ghetto, though there were many more not recorded. During this period, many Jews were also forced to work for the Wehrmacht and the ghetto's German administration, especially in the nearby
Janowska labor camp. On 24–25 June 1942, 2,000 Jews were taken to the labor camp; only 120 were used for forced labor, and all of the others were shot.
Between 10 and 31 August 1942, the "Great Aktion" was carried out, where between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were rounded up, gathered at transit point placed in Janowska camp and then deported to Belzec. Many who were not deported, including local orphans and hospital inpatients, were shot. On 1 September 1942 the Gestapo hanged the head of Lwów’s
Judenrat
A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every c ...
and members of the ghetto's Jewish police force on balconies of Judenrat's building at Łokietka street and Hermana street corner. Around 65,000 Jews remained while winter approached with no heating or sanitation, leading to an outbreak of typhus.
Between 5 and 7 January 1943, another 15,000-20,000 Jews, including the last members of the Judenrat, were shot outside of the town on the orders of Fritz Katzmann. After this ''aktion'' in January 1943 Judenrat was dissolved, that what remained of the ghetto was renamed ''Judenlager Lemberg'' (Jewish Camp Lwów), thus formally redesigned as labor camp with about 12,000 ''legal'' Jews, able to work in the German war industry and several thousands ''illegal'' Jews (mainly women, children and elderly) hiding in it.
At the beginning of June 1943 Germans decided to end the existence of the Jewish quarter and its inhabitants. As Nazis entered the Ghetto they met some sporadic acts of armed resistance, facing grenades and
Molotov cocktail
A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see other names'') is a hand thrown incendiary weapon constructed from a frangible container filled with flammable substances equipped with a fuse (typically a glass bottle filled with fla ...
s. The Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators lost 9 killed and 20 wounded. However, most of the Jews were trying to hide themselves in earlier prepared hideouts (so called ''bunkers''). In effect many buildings were suffused with gasoline and burned in order to "flush out" Jews from their hiding places. Some Jews managed to escape or to conceal themselves in the sewer system.
By the time that the Soviet
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
entered Lwów on 26 July 1944, only a few hundred Jews remained in the city. The number varies from 200 to 900 (823 according to data of Jewish Provisional Committee in Lwów, pl, Tymczasowy Komitet Żydowski we Lwowie from 1945).
Among its notable inhabitants was
Chaim Widawski, who disseminated news about the war picked up with an illegal radio.
Polish Olympic football player
Leon Sperling was shot to death by the Nazis in the ghetto in December 1941. Nazi-hunter
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration ...
was one of the best-known Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg Ghetto to survive the war (as his memoirs (The Executioners Among Us) indicate, he was saved from execution by a Ukrainian policeman), though he was later transported to a
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
, rather than remaining in the ghetto.
Some local gentiles attempted to aid and shelter the Jews.
Kazimiera Nazarewicz, a Polish nanny hired by a Jewish family, sheltered their daughter throughout the war, and delivered aid to her parents who were imprisoned in the ghetto. After the war, Nazarewicz became one of the recipients of the
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sa ...
title. Leopold Socha and Stefan Wróblewski, laborers maintaining the municipal sewage system, organized in their shelters for 21 one Jews who survived the ghetto's liquidation; 10 of them survived the war. Socha, Wróblewski and their wives received the Righteous titles after the war. Another Righteous, Miroslav Kravchuk, with the help of some acquaintances, shelter his Jewish ex-wife, and some of their other family members and acquaintances. Kravchuk survived 6-month imprisonment by Gestapo following their arrest of him under the suspicion of him helping Jews.
See also
*''
In Darkness'' 2011 historical drama by
David F. Shamoon and
Agnieszka Holland
*
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland
Ghettos were established by Nazi Germany in hundreds of locations across occupied Poland after the German invasion of Poland. Yitzhak Arad, ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.'' Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987.''Biuletyn ...
*
The Holocaust in Poland
The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holoca ...
*
World War II casualties of Poland
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*A True Story of Holocaust Survivors
The documentaryincludes 60 historical pictures. 1932-1944, Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine)
*Aharon Weiss,
Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust
The ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'' (1990) has been called "the most recognized reference book on the Holocaust". It was published in an English-language translated edition by Macmillan in tandem with the Hebrew language original edition pu ...
vol. 3, pp. 928–931. Map, photos
*Filip Friedman, ''Zagłada Żydów lwowskich'' (Extermination of the Jews of Lwów)
online in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian
Further reading
* Marek Herman, ''From the Alps to the Red Sea''. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers and
Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, 1985. pp. 14–60
*
Dawid Kahane
David Kahane ( he, דוד כהנא, pl, Dawid Kahane; 15 March 1903 – 24 September 1998) was a Polish-Jewish religious teacher, doctor of philosophy, member of the Mizrachi party in Lwów and Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army. He was also the Ch ...
, ''Lvov Ghetto Diary''. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. (Published in Hebrew as ''Yoman getto Lvov'', Jerusalem:Yad Vashem, 1978)
* Dr Filip Friedman, ''Zagłada Żydów lwowskich'', Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, Centralny Komitet Żydów Polskich, Nr 4, Łódź 1945
*
* Weiss, Jakob,
The Lemberg Mosaic. New York : Alderbrook Press, 2010.
* Chiger, Krystyna,
The Girl in the Green sweater: A life in Holocaust's Shadow, Macmillan, 2010.
* Leon Weliczker Wells, ''The Janowska Road'' (original publication Macmillan, 1963). Amazon: Halo Pr, 1999.
External links
US Holocaust Museuminformation on Lviv
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lwow Ghetto
History of Lviv
Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland
1941 establishments in Ukraine
1943 disestablishments in Ukraine