Lviv pogroms
.jpg)
Woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs, Medova Street in Lviv, 1941
|
|
| Date | June 1941 - July 1941 |
|---|---|
| Location | Lviv, Occupied Poland (Nazi German Distrikt Galizien) |
| Coordinates | 49°30′36″N 24°00′36″E / 49.510°N 24.010°ECoordinates: 49°30′36″N 24°00′36″E / 49.510°N 24.010°E |
| Type | Killings |
| Participants | Ukrainian nationalists |
| Deaths | In excess of 6,000 Jews |
The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941, during the Wehrmacht's attack on Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in World War II. The German historian Peter Longerich and the Holocaust Encyclopedia estimate that the first pogrom cost at least 4,000 lives. It was followed by the additional 2,500 to 3,000 arrests and executions in subsequent Einsatzgruppe killings, and culminated in the so-called "Petlura Days" massacre of more than 2,000 Jews, all killed in a one-month span. Prior to the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and the ensuing Holocaust in Europe, the city of Lviv had the third-largest Jewish population in Poland during the interwar period, which swelled further to over 200,000 Jews as the refugees fled east from the Nazis.
Immediately after the German army entered Lviv, the prison gates were opened and the scale of the NKVD prisoner massacres carried out by the Soviets revealed. An OUN member estimated 10,000 dead victims at Brygidki, although the numbers were later adjusted by the German investigation down to 4,000 in total. The report drafted by Judge Möller singled out the Jews as responsible for the Soviet atrocities in accordance with the Nazi theory of Judeo-Bolshevism, even though Polish Jews had nothing to do with the NKVD killings. As observed by British-Polish historian Prof. Norman Davies: "in the [Lviv] personnel of the Soviet security police at the time, the high percentage of Jews was striking." The Einsatzgruppe C with the participation of Ukrainian National Militia, and the OUN leaders, organized the first pogrom, chiefly in revenge for the combined killings at Lviv's three prisons including Brygidki, Łąckiego and Zamarstynowska Street prisons. The German report stated that the majority of the Soviet murder victims were Ukrainian. Although a significant number of Jewish prisoners had also been among the victims of the NKVD massacres (including intellectuals and political activists), the Polish Jews were targeted collectively. An ad hoc Ukrainian People's Militia – which would soon be reorganized by Himmler as the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) – was assembled to spearhead the first pogrom. In the presence of the newly arrived German forces, the infuriated and irrational crowd took the violent actions against the Jewish population of the city. The German propaganda made newsreels that purported to implicate Soviet Jews in the killing of Ukrainians, and the German Foreign Office relayed them to Switzerland.
...
Wikipedia