The National Museum-Memorial of Victims of the Occupation Regimes, or the Prison on Łącki (Street) () is a former

detention center A detention center, or detention centre, is any location used for detention. Specifically, it can mean: * A jail or prison, a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as a ...

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

, that throughout the 20th century was primarily used as a political prison of the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

regimes. The museum houses a main office of the Center for Research of Liberation Movement.

Name

The prison's name derives from the former name of the street upon which the main entrance was located. Formerly known in Polish as ''ulica Eliasza Łąckiego'' (Łącki Street), and today known in Ukrainian as ''vulytsia Karla Bryullova'' (Bryullov Street), the road is a side street of the main thoroughfare, ''vulytsia Stepana Bandery'' (Bandera Street). Łącki Street was named after Eliasz Łącki who was a Polish war hero of the 1672-76 Polish–Ottoman War during the

1672 siege of Lwów Year 167 ( CLXVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aurelius and Quadratus (or, less frequently, year 920 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 167 for t ...

History

Austria-Hungary

The building complex was built in 1889–1890 at the intersection of ''ulica Sapiehy'' (today ''vulytsia Bandery'') and ''ulica Kopernika'' on the project of architect

Józef Kajetan Janowski Józef is a Polish variant of the masculine given name Joseph. Art * Józef Chełmoński (1849-1914), Polish painter * Józef Gosławski (1908-1963), Polish sculptor Clergy * Józef Glemp (1929-2013), Polish cardinal * Józef Kowalski (19 ...

. It is built in a

Neo-Renaissance Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th-century Revivalism (architecture), architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival architecture, Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival ar ...

style and originally was designed for

Austro-Hungarian Gendarmerie Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

's main office in the city.

Second Polish Republic

The portion where the prison was actually located was built soon after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

in 1918–1920 when Lviv was part of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

. The prison portion housed the Fourth Department of the State Police Main Commandant's Office, one duty of which included a fight against "anti-government" organizations such as

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; ) was a Ukrainian nationalist organization established on February 2, 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups. ...

Communist Party of Western Ukraine The Communist Party of Western Ukraine (; ) was a clandestine political party in eastern interwar Poland. Until 1923 it was known as the Communist Party of Eastern Galicia (Komunistyczna Partia Wschodniej Galicji). The Young Communist League of ...

and others. Unofficially the prison was intended for

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...

s. In 1935 the investigating department of police was quartered in the building, while the prison was turned into a detention center.

World War II

With the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

in 1939 and the partition of the

between

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, the prison was transformed into the NKVD Prison No.1 which was designed to accommodate 1,500 prisoners. The regional administration of

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

took up quarters in the building. During the

Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a ...

, the NKVD shot the prisoners held in the prison when Soviet forces retreated from Lviv, killing 1681 people. In June and July 1941, the prison was the site of several atrocities committed by the OUN and the Nazi SS against the Jewish population of Lviv during the

Lviv pogroms The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive pogroms and massacres of Jews in June and July 1941 in the city of Lwów in German-occupied Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine (now Lviv, Ukraine). The massacres were perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists (s ...

. During 1941-1944 the building was used as a

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

detention center and housed an office of

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imp ...

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence ...

(SD). From July 21 to 26, 1941 former Polish Prime Minister

Kazimierz Bartel Kazimierz Władysław Bartel (; ; 3 March 1882 – 26 July 1941) was a Polish people, Polish mathematician, freemason, scholar, diplomat and politician who served as 15th, 17th and 19th List of prime ministers of Poland, Prime Minister of P ...

was imprisoned here.

Soviet Ukraine

During the

Anti-Soviet resistance by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army The anti-Soviet resistance by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (''Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya'', UPA) was a guerrilla war waged by Ukrainian nationalist partisan formations against the Soviet Union in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and ...

in the decade following

, a number of members of the OUN were held in the prison. From the 1960 to the 1980s, a number of Ukrainian dissidents were held in the prison, including

Viacheslav Chornovil Viacheslav Maksymovych Chornovil (; 24 December 1937 – 25 March 1999) was a Ukrainian Soviet dissident, independence activist and politician who was the leader of the People's Movement of Ukraine from 1989 until his death in 1999. He spent fi ...

and Iryna Kalynets.https://www.academia.edu/14467054/The_Lontsky_Street_Prison_Memorial_Museum_An_Example_of_Post_Communist_Negationism

Post-Soviet Ukraine

In 2009, the prison building was turned into a museum, under the ownership of the

Security Service of Ukraine The Security Service of Ukraine ( ; abbreviated as SBU [] or SSU) is the main Internal security, internal security agency of the Government of Ukraine, Ukrainian government. Its main duties include counter-intelligence activity and combati ...

(SBU). Ahead of the

2010 Ukrainian presidential election 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to s ...

, plans were made to have the

Ukrainian Institute of National Memory The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM, ), also translated as the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, is the central executive body operating under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Established on 31 May 2006 as a special org ...

assume jurisdiction over the museum; however, those plans were cancelled following the appointment of

Mykola Azarov Mykola Yanovych Azarov (; ; née, né Pakhlo, Cyrillic: Пахло; born 17 December 1947) is a Ukraine, Ukrainian politician who was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 11 March 2010 to 27 January 2014. He was the First Vice Prime Minister an ...

as Prime Minister. In September 2010, the museum's director Ruslan Zabily was arrested by the SBU and detained for over 14 hours without a warrant, with his laptop and research material being confiscated, and was accused by the SBU of leaking state secrets. The

Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union All-Ukrainian Association of Public Organizations Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) was founded by 15 public human rights organizations on 1 April 2004. UHHRU is a non-profit and non-partisan organization. Statutory mission Realizati ...

described the arrest as "illegal," comparing it to a crackdown in Russia "against historians studying the history of political repression." After being released Zabily held a press conference in which he accused the government of seeking to repress research into the history of the

. In February 2011, Zabily was once again detained by the SBU and interrogated for five hours.

Controversy

The National Museum-Memorial of Victims of the Occupation Regimes has faced criticism for minimising the crimes of the Nazi occupation regime during World War II and crimes committed by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists during the same period. Historian

John-Paul Himka John-Paul Himka (born May 18, 1949) is an American-Canadian historian and retired professor of history of the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Himka received his BA in Byzantine-Slavonic Studies and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michi ...

stated in 2015 that the museum "glides lightly over the Nazi occupation" and that it "glorifies OUN without mentioning or admitting that the militia associated with OUN was deeply involved in murders and other atrocities against Jews on the very premises of the Lontsky St. prison." Alexandra Wachter of the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

stated in 2017 that the museum "focuses on the heroism of OUN and UPA activists and omits the local involvement in the Holocaust that might question this heroism," also saying that what Nazi material is presented in the museum is presented "without communicating its original propagandistic, anti-Semitic nature."

Gallery

File:Prizon on Lonts'koho, Lviv.jpg, Entrance File:Двор тюрьмы на лонцкого.jpg, Courtyard

References

External links

Official website

Official website
of the Center for Research of Liberation Movement
Map of the former Łąckoho street
in Lviv * Pavlyshyn, A.
History of one jail. Prison on Łąckiego: whose truth is more? (Історія однієї в’язниці. Тюрма на Лонцького: чиєї правди більше?)
'

The Ukrainian Week ''The Ukrainian Week'' (, ) is an illustrated weekly magazine and news outlet covering politics, economics and the arts and aimed at the socially engaged Ukrainian-language reader. It provides a range of analysis, opinion, interviews, feature p ...

. 24 September 2010. * Bilan, B.
Prison on Łąckiego. Liberation from death
'. ZIK. 27 September 2012.
Prison at Łąckiego
at the Istorychna Pravda (

Ukrayinska Pravda ''Ukrainska Pravda'' is a Ukrainian socio-political online media outlet founded by Heorhii Gongadze in April 2000. After Gongadze’s death in September 2000, the editorial team was led by co-founder Olena Prytula, who remained the editor-in ...

) {{KGB massacres 2009 establishments in Ukraine Museums established in 2009 Museums in Lviv History museums in Ukraine Museums of communism Prison museums in Europe Defunct prisons in Ukraine Prisons in the Soviet Union Lwów in World War II Renaissance Revival architecture in Ukraine NKVD prisoner massacres Frankivskyi District (Lviv) Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists