Lviv pogroms (1941)

This article is about the pogroms in 1941. For the 1918 pogrom, see Lwów pogrom (1918).

The Lviv pogroms were two massacres of Jews living in and near in the city of Lwów, the occupied Republic of Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), that took place from 30 June to 2 July and 25–29 July 1941 during World War II. According to Yad Vashem six thousand Jews were killed by Einsatzgruppen, some Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian militia. During the interbellum, Lviv had the third-largest Jewish population in Poland, which swelled further to over 200,000 Jews as refugees fled from the Nazis. Documents recently released by the Ukrainian Security Services allege that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) may have been involved less than originally thought.

First pogrom

Immediately after the Germans entered the city, Einsatzgruppen with the participation of Ukrainian nationalists organized a pogrom in retaliation for the retreating NKVD's mass-murder of approximately 2,000-10,000 prisoners (including mainly Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals and political activists) at Lviv's three prisons (Brygidki prison, Łąckiego street prison and Zamarstynowska street prison). According to Ukrainian scholars most of these victims were Ukrainian. Although Jews had also been among the victims of the NKVD, they were accused as a group by some Ukrainians of having cooperated with the Soviets. Before the massacre, the Germans and the Ukrainians spread rumors implicating the Jews in killing Ukrainian political prisoners. The crowd ran wild—assaulting, abusing, torturing, and murdering Jews, and raping Jewish women as German soldiers took pictures. The Ukrainian militia (which later became the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) hastily created by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists after the occupation of the Lviv participated in the pogrom. During the four-week pogrom from the end of June to early July 1941, it is alleged that nearly 4,000 Jews were murdered.

Petlura days

A second pogrom took place in the last days of July 1941 and was labeled "Petlura Days" after the assassinated Ukrainian leader Symon Petlura. This pogrom was allegedly organized by Ukrainian nationalist circles with German encouragement. On 25 July, Ukrainian militants from outside the city, joined the Ukrainian militia (which later became the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) and participated in acts of violence against Jews. This group assaulted any Jew whom they encountered with clubs, knives, and axes. Jews were taken to the Jewish cemetery and murdered brutally. Ukrainian police circulated in groups of five and consulted prepared lists. Some 2,000 people were murdered in approximately three days. According to Richard Breitman 5000 Jews died as a result of this pogrom. In addition, some 3,000 persons, mostly Jews, were executed in the municipal stadium by the German military.

Afterwards

The Lviv ghetto was established after the pogroms, holding some 120,000 Jews, most of whom were deported to the Belzec extermination camp or killed locally during the following two years. Following the pogroms, Einsatzgruppen killings, harsh conditions in the ghetto, and deportation to the Nazi concentration camps, including the Janowska concentration camp located on the outskirts of the city, resulted in the almost complete annihilation of the Jewish population. When the Soviet forces reached Lviv in 1944 driving out the Nazi occupation, only 200–300 Jews remained.

Controversy on facts

Main article: Controversy about the Lviv pogroms (1941)

Holocaust scholars attribute the killing to Ukrainians under the direction of the Ukrainian nationalists.

Russian sources are quite specific with regard to the pogroms. The Russian historian Sergei Chuyev wrote: "That on 30 June in Lviv the German administration started mass repressions. The commander of the "Einzatzgruppen C" Dr. Rasch had incriminated the death of those incarcerated in the Lviv jails to the "Jews from the NKVD" which became the spark for the terror against the Jews and Poles of Lviv. In the bloody murder of the Jews the Einsatzgruppen under the command of brigadeerfuhrer SS Karl Eberhard Schenhardt took prominence. The sections of this group under the command of H. Kruger and W. Kutshman on 4 July murdered 23 Polish professors and their families. On 11 July two more were killed, and later the former prime-minister of Poland, professor Bartel. In the Autumn of 1941 a ghetto was formed in Lviv"

An international commission was set up at The Hague in the Netherlands in 1958 to carry out independent investigations. The members were four former anti-Hitler activists: Norwegian lawyer Hans Cappelen, former Danish foreign minister and president of the Danish parliament Ole Bjørn Kraft, Dutch socialist Karel van Staal, Belgian law professor Flor Peeters, and Swiss jurist and member of parliament Kurt Scoch. Following its interrogation of a number of Ukrainian witnesses between November 1959 and March 1960, the commission concluded as follows:

After four months of inquiries and the evaluation of 232 statements by witnesses from all circles involved, it can be established that the accusations against the Battalion Nachtigall and against the then Lieutenant and currently Federal Minister Oberländer have no foundation in fact.

A valuable source of a detailed study of archival documents of this period is de Zayas' book The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 Sections regarding the investigation of the Lviv atrocities are available online [1].

In Autumn 1959 the Soviet press mounted a major disinformation campaign against the then minister in the West German Adenauer cabinet, Theodor Oberländer, who in 1941 had been commander of the Nachtigall Battalion made up of a couple hundred Ukrainian volunteers. The Soviets accused him and the Ukrainian battalion of participating in the SS murders in Lviv. On 1959 September the Radianska Ukraina newspaper wrote:

Eighteen years ago the fascists committed a horrendous crime in Lviv in the night of 29–30 June 1941. The Hitlerites arrested on the basis of prepared lists hundreds of Communists, Communist youth, and non-party members and murdered them in brutal fashion in the courtyard of the Samarstinov Prison.

These accusations were picked up by the Western press and eventually led to Oberländer's resignation. The investigation by the district attorney's office in Bonn, however, completely cleared him. Notwithstanding, the accusations against Oberländer and the Nachtigall Battalion have kept resurfacing in Western outlets.