My Lviv Holocaust story really began in 2011. An English friend and I discussed organizing Holocaust education trips to Poland and Western Ukraine. I already knew about Stolpersteine as there were more than 300 in Rome where I lived at the time.
I read Primo Levi while studying at Polytechnic in London, during which time I bought a video about Majdanek (Lublin, Poland). I'd watched Shoah by Claude Lanzmann on television.
Were the perpetrators ever brought to justice? Where did all of this happen? My move to Lviv on 25/12/13 answered some of those questions, and here we are.
First impressions of Lviv included anti-semitic "humour" in everyday conversation. Some strong opinions about The Holodomor were aired, "more people were murdered, and they were our people".
It was Stalin's engineered famine, state-controlled "collectivization" (industrialization of agriculture). People were not stripped, thrown into a pit with their children and shot. There's a difference.
However, here in Ukraine, The Holodomor is de facto genocide. Entrenched in education, it has come to define the essence of modern Ukraine, fundamental to how the Ukrainian people view themselves and their fractured relationship with Russia.
Indeed, The Holodomor as genocide validates Ukraine as victim, and, bizarrely, has been used by some to exonerate Ukraine of the many heinous Holocaust atrocities in which Ukrainians were complicit.
What do I think? Yes, genocide. Academics outside Ukraine invariably describe it as a crime against humanity, and that debate will rage forever. Have you read about Herbert Backe's Hunger Plan?
Black-clad militiamen still run around Lviv, while students and youngsters have been spotted wearing swastika pins. Nazi salutes in Lviv bars are not uncommon, they call it "Roman salute" but Lviv is not Rome. Several passing acquaintances who defended Ukraine have returned to Lviv with neo-Nazi "Schutzstaffel" SS patches sewn on to their black rucksacks. What's going on?
LHRF was founded in September, 2020. Since then, several Holocaust historians have contributed their considerable knowledge to the project.
I research then publish new information about two mass execution sites (the area around the former hybrid camp - Janowska, and Lysynychi forest), the Lviv ghetto, and the Lviv pogroms in 1941. There is a news page and my manifesto is clear.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is in it's fourth year and no one expects war to end. The concept of "perpetual war" has become a new reality.
Despite this, it is my obligation to develop LHRF and ensure that my Lviv Holocaust tour endures, war or no war. Parallels between the geopolitics of Lviv in 1941 and since I moved here are reason enough to push on.
War has led to a surge in ultra-nationalism and confused ethnocentrism. The Rise of the Right, as PWEI predicted. Everyone knows the risks. Ukraine could quite easily lurch back to the bad old days.
Ukrainians must accept that The Holocaust began on their land, albeit occupied, and was abetted by their compatriots. Simple enough.
Acceptance of complicity, however, is extremely unlikely. Until, or if it ever happens, Ukraine will remain a pariah nation, Ukrainians pariah people in the context of Holocaust history.
Jewish ghetto history was hidden in Soviet times. Today, parts of the former ghetto area share space with modern structures, but most of the buildings have not changed since November 6th, 1941 when the ghetto was established.
From November 16th to the middle of December 1941, Jewish people were forcibly resettled to the run-down district of Zamarstyniv from their homes elsewhere.
This took longer than expected, one year instead of one month. Many resisted with incredible bravery, but the end was near.
Ukrainian collaborators and Poles lived on in the relative safety of "Aryan" Lviv, while Jewish people moved into the ghetto area on foot with a handful of belongings. Zamarstyniv, their new "home", was the poorest district of Lviv and still is today.
Some 138,000 Jewish people existed at one time or another in the ghetto. It was not uncommon for two families to share one room, or two dozen people to occupy a two room apartment.
Hidden Lviv where at least 90,000 Jewish people and many POWs were murdered. This mass shooting site has been unremembered and will become a residential or recreation area given time, this being Western Ukraine.
Soviet liberators predictably claimed over 200,000 dead, an overestimation to be used as propaganda. The reality was closer to half that number, still a terrifying statistic. Ukrainians live well nearby and a colourful children's playground has been inserted by Lviv City Council, as is tradition.
People were brought to Lysynychi and Kryvchytsi by truck and possibly by rail. Some may have had to walk under duress. Lychakivska was the uphill route and it has not changed since then.
There was no actual camp or "facility" bar a few guard houses and storage areas. Eyewitness reports clearly state that people were moved by truck to a "ravine", close to the yeast factory (Enzym Biotech today) and a railway line that still runs adjacent to Lychakivska.
Ukrainian auxiliary police led them to an "out of sight" area where they were shot.
A second route to the Lysynychi mass execution site was taken by trucks. They moved from Lviv old town, up Lychakivska then on to today's Glinianska tract. From there, the places where people were shot and killed (then exumed and burned - 1005) were nearby. I'll update the Lysynychi forest page when the facts have been gathered and checked.
Janowska today is a dilapidated prison with 600 inmates. Between 1941-1943 it was a hybrid camp where thousands of people were murdered. German SS (Schutzstaffel), Sipo-SD (Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst), Order Police (Ordnungspolizei), Einsatzgruppen (at first) and Hiwis (local auxiliaries / collaborators) were the perpetrators.
The patrolling enforcers / collaborating killers were local Ukrainian Protection Police (UOP / Ukrainska Okhoronna Politsiia), also known as "shuma". These murderers outnumbered indigenous Germans at Janowksa and other mass killing sites in Lviv by 10 to 1. Their title in German was "Schutzmannschaft des Einzeldienst".
Not less than 40,000 Jewish people were murdered in and behind the facility, 65,000+ more deported to die in Bełżec, Auschwitz and Sobibór.
Several undefined structures, perimeter walls and barbed-wire fences from 1941 are a reminder to most of us who dare walk by. Modern usage has delivered some preservation but no one has access, including historians. The likelihood of destruction of evidence is singularly high.
Photo credit (end of the line tram stop, former gate to Janowska), many thanks to Heritage & Memory at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Jelmer Peter & Bram de Jong.
There are videos of the Lviv pogroms in 1941. They show us how The Holocaust genocide began when elements of Ukrainian society took to beating and murdering their Jewish colleagues and neighbours, beginning on July 1st and continuing for several days then weeks thereafter.
Absolute evidence of willingness on the part of many Ukrainians to collaborate, the seed of The Holocaust sown on the streets of Lviv, Ukraine.
A deliberately vague memorial about crimes and violence by regimes against Ukrainians dominates the street where Jewish people were attacked by Ukrainians, militiamen, and organized Ukrainian nationalists. Many were killed, including women.
When Einsatzgruppe C arrived on July 2nd, torture was carried out in a stadium near Citadel. Survivors were taken outside the city and murdered. Today, Citadel Lviv (Stalag 328) is a particularly grotesque "Gastro Boutique Hotel".
Factual information about Ukrainian complicity in the Lviv pogroms is being called into question, even dismissed, as war with Russia drags on. Brazen revisionists are trying to rewrite history, labelling clear evidence of local participation in the pogroms, roundups, deportations, ghetto aktions and mass shootings as Russian propaganda.
It is dangerous, it is irresponsible, it sinks to the level of the evil we are all trying to overcome. Learn from the past instead of attempting to erase it.
Property developers that overbuild on the former Jewish ghetto area are guaranteed a post on the Lviv news page, idem state-sanctioned revisionism.
I bide my time while investigating under the radar influencers who work for independent institutions in Lviv that pretend to educate impartially, when their goal is propagation of revisionist agendas.
I frequent the streets of Lviv old town to find and document vandalized or neglected memorials. The popular Ukrainian tradition of anti-semitic graffiti where synagogues once stood, and the profusion of playgrounds where innocent people perished, is always noted.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022 is discussed as it has had a small impact on daily routines in Lviv and limits economic opportunities.
When wanted war criminal Putin spewed forth his "denazification" tirade, we all checked the calendar (not yet New Julian). Yes, it was 2022. Not 1942. Then his compatriots entered Ukraine from Belarus and Russia to kill Ukrainians.
Propaganda about the entirety of Ukraine being overrun by Banderites has flowed from the Kremlin ever since. It's a stretch, 1942 was a long time ago.
In the case of Western Ukraine, however, there is real historical precedent, but no justification to risk WWIII.
I question why so many ordinary Ukrainians from Lvivshchyna collaborated with Nazis and facilitated mass murder in The Holocaust of Bullets.
Organized Ukrainian nationalists today defend their country from Russian hybrid fascism and that must be commended, as much as severance from flags, other emblems and colours that represented OUN-B, UPA, and connected militia groups in the 1940s must be made mandatory.
The photograph shows naked women and children in Mizoch (Ukrainian: Мізоч) waiting to be shot dead on October 14th, 1942. One can see that the perpetrators led them to death in groups of 25.
The two "men" wear a white armband. Where have I seen that before? On Ukrainian "men" beating and raping women during the first Lviv pogrom.
Ukrainian "People's Militsiya" (Народна Міліція). Proof. Evidence. Read more about genocide in the same area (Rivne). By joining me on my authentic Lviv Holocaust tour, you acknowledge the many challenges we face.
Read more about the original and only relevant Holocaust tour in Lviv. It has been curated to deliver the facts about methods employed by Ukrainian collaborators to register Jewish people, carry out property raids, guard ghettos, transport civilians to mass execution sites, and cordon such sites off.
Most collaborators were former OUN-B and UPA militiamen, many of whom fought for Stalin's Soviet Army between 1939-1940.
I explain how Schutzmannschaft rounded up then killed Jewish people, and, critically, how "security services" made up of the ethnic population made The Holocaust of Bullets happen.
The photograph was taken in 2021 and it shows the railway line in Briukhovychi, a settlement near Lviv. Deportation trains from Klepariv station passed through Briukhovychi, destination Bełżec. Many people died by jumping from wagons, suicide or doomed attempts to escape.
My fully private Lviv Holocaust Tour is a sobering experience. Mass shooting sites, assembly points and Jewish ghetto buildings are largely unchanged since 1941.
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