While the photo shows an abandoned and overgrown street destroyed by Nazis when the ghetto was liquidated, all the buildings nearby are the same now as in 1941.
The former Lviv ghetto area has survived, unlike the people who had to exist there from November, 1941 to June, 1943.
It is not "protected" by UNESCO (or anyone) and Ukrainian life there carries on none the wiser, property developers (see below) and petty vandalism the only risks.
We can walk through the same streets today where fear and terror reigned for almost 20 extreme months. Conditions were impossible and sanitation poor, movement to and from the ghetto controlled by work permits.
Random killings kept everyone in a state of panic. "Actions", meaning round ups, mass shootings and deportations to execution sites in Lviv, Bełżec, Auschwitz (May, 1943) and Sobibór (June, 1943) left almost no one alive.
On or close to December 15th, 1941, the first catastrophic action / selection took place near the bridge on Peltewna (Chornovola Street today). 5,000+ sick and elderly Jews were murdered.
Three months later, in March 1942, it was "action against anti-social elements". 15,000 women, children, the frail and the elderly became the first "transport" to Bełżec. Operation Reinhard had begun.
At the end of June, 2,000 people were sent to Janowska across the city. 1,880 were shot and 120 selected to work.
In August, the "Great Action" took place. Able-bodied men were selected for hard labour, 50,000 others were transported to Bełżec from Klepariv station and murdered.
Ghetto liquidation (June, 1943) resulted in the deaths of 3,000+ people. 7,000+ more were taken to Janowska and shot. Many committed suicide and they were found in buildings and on the ghetto streets.
Manhunts led by Ukrainians continued through July. We write "manhunt" but it's a misnomer, as women and children were also caught and executed.
Those who survived life in the Lviv ghetto toiled in workshops and factories that supported the front. Their "freedom" (forced labour) did not last long.
When Soviet liberators arrived in Lviv on July 26th 1944, less than 800 of the 160,000+ Jewish people who resided in Lviv before June 1941 were still alive. Antisemitism is common here and very few, if any lessons have been learned since then.
Russia's violent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 namechecked the term "denazification", and that raised plenty of questions about how Ukraine, Lviv and west Ukraine in particular, continues to venerate it's "heroes" (Nazi collaborators).
The rate at which property developers have swarmed all over the former Lviv ghetto in the name of profit is alarming.
Given that Lviv has a significant number of young IT workers who are first time buyers on the property ladder, we understand that demand for homes is high.
However, what we do not understand nor accept is why said developers are building supermarkets and apartment blocks over spaces where thousands of people were murdered.
Why is local government permitting such activities? Why are said young "educated" IT workers ignoring the history of their city and their people? All of this equates to ideological regression, a return to the Ukrainian nationalist, Nazi past of Lviv.
State-sanctioned revisionism masquerading as "developing urban infrastructure" is a fair description of what is happening.
There is another, less polite term for this policy and it describes hard-line Ukrainian nationalists scheming behind closed doors.
Attempts to denigrate Holocaust history by the arrogant and ignorant of Lviv will not succeed. The conscientious amongst us will continue to research and reveal the truth. As Lviv locals, it is our responsibility.
Property development in Pidzamche and Zamarstyniv is destruction of evidence. This is the modern Lviv Holocaust and opposition to it is growing.
We cannot stop the simple builders. We can, however, develop this website into a de facto resource and repository to exert plenty of influence.
It is important to clarify that not every street and building in the former Lviv ghetto has gone. Many remain and will still be here 100 years from now.
We have yet to reach the Kraków Podgórze ghetto scenario (two ghetto walls remain), or worse still, that in Warsaw where just one part of one ghetto wall remains.
Lviv old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pidzamche and Zamarstyniv (former ghetto areas) a few kilometres due north are not. Perhaps this will change in future.