Lviv pogroms (1941)

The **Lviv pogroms** refer to the massacres of Jews between June and July 1941 in Lwów. Ukrainian nationalists and the Nazi German death squads _Einsatzgruppen_ committed the pogroms from 30 June to 2 July, and from 25 to 29 July. Thousands of Jews were killed in the pogroms. The pogroms were part of the Holocaust.

## Overview

Ukrainians and Catholic Poles killed Jews in the first pogrom. They reportedly got angry when they found thousands of bodies from the NKVD prisoner massacres in three Lviv prisons. They blamed it on "Jewish Communists". The Germans tapped into their sentiment and incited the pogroms. The Lviv pogroms have recently become a controversial issue due to the dynamics of geopolitics. The scale of Ukrainian nationalist involvement in the pogroms is still under debate.

### June 30

When the German-led Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union, about 160,000 Jews lived in Lviv, many of whom were refugees from Nazi-occupied Poland. Lviv was taken over by the Wehrmacht in the morning of June 30, 1941. The German troops included the 1st Mountain Division and the Abwehr-subordinated Nachtigall Battalion staffed by ethnic Ukrainians.

Then, they forced Jews to remove the NKVD prisoner massacres' bodies and clean up the scene. In the afternoon, Ukrainian locals were reportedly angry at "the Jews [...] who had always collaborated with the Bolsheviks".

#### Ukrainian People's Militia

The Ukrainian People's Militia was formed, which included activists of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). They, identified by their yellow and blue armbands, joined the massacre of Jews. Former Soviet policemen, dressed in blue Soviet uniforms and wearing hats with a Ukrainian trident, also helped kill Jews. The OUN handed out flyers to the locals that said:

In the evening, Ukrainian nationalists declared an independent Ukrainian state and future collaboration with Nazi Germany.

### July 1

A full-scale pogrom began on July 1. Jews were forced onto the streets, with Jewish women singled out to be stripped naked and beaten. Many Jews who cleaned up the former NKVD prisons were killed.

### July 2

Part of the _Einsatzgruppe C_ arrived on July 2, when anti-Jewish violence got worse. More Jews were shot into mass graves, aided by the Ukrainian militia.

## Second pogrom

The second pogrom happened in late July 1941. It was called the "", named after the assassinated Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura. Ukrainian militias were backed by the Germans in massacring of Jews, with clubs, axes and knives. More Jews were also arrested and deported.

### Nazi German estimate

A German security report of July 16 stated that 7,000 Jews were "captured and shot". Some historians said that the German number was an overestimate to impress the Nazi leadership.

### Historians

German historian Dieter Pohl said that 4,000 of Lviv's Jews were killed in the pogroms between July 1 and 25, 1941. American historian Richard Breitman put the death toll at 8,000.

### _Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945_

According to the _Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945_, the first pogrom killed 2,000 to 5,000 Jews, and 2,500 to 3,000 more were shot by the _Einsatzgruppen_, while the second pogrom killed over 1,000 Jews.

## Aftermath

Ukrainian nationalists' participation in the pogroms did not gain them a Ukrainian state. Instead, Stepan Bandera was arrested on July 5, and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on September 15, where he was detained until September 1944.

The Lwów Ghetto was founded in November 1941 on the orders of SS-_Brigadeführer_ Fritz Katzmann, the SS and Police Leader (SSPF) of Lemberg. The 120,000 Jews of the ghetto were deported to the Belzec extermination camp or killed locally over the following two years. When Soviet troops reached Lviv on July 21, 1944, less than 1% of Lviv's Jews had survived. Meanwhile, the Soviet regime is said to have never commemorated the Holocaust:

Modern Lviv is 90% Ukrainian. In Soviet Ukraine, Jewish deaths were counted as Soviet civilian deaths. In post-Soviet Ukraine, commemorations focused on Lviv's Ukrainian past, while the lost Jews were ignored.

## Legacy

Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), co-founder of the OUN, has long been labeled as the pogroms' leader. However, the accusations against Bandera are disputed by other scholars, including German–Polish historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe and German political scientist Andreas Umland. They believe that Bandera was not involved in the Holocaust:

Historian John-Paul Himka said that the OUN did not consider Jews their main enemies, but they killed Jews to curry favor with the Germans, hoping that they would be granted a Ukrainian state. The false perception of Jews supporting Communism, shaped by pre-existing antisemitism among Ukrainians and Polish Catholics, also contributed to violence against Jews.

Meanwhile, historian Jeffrey Kopstein said that much anti-Jewish violence happened in where the Germans were not present. Known Ukrainian Communists were spared despite local anti-Soviet sentiment being common. Lviv Jews also had a high level of support for Zionism, which was considered a threat by both Polish and Ukrainian nationalists. Some Western Ukrainian towns with higher Jewish sympathy for communism in turn had fewer pogroms.

## Related pages

- Iași pogrom
- Kristallnacht
- Jedwabne pogrom
- Szczuczyn pogrom