Lviv ghetto

At the end of July 1941, the Judenrat and the Ordnungsdienst were created. The Lviv ghetto was the third largest, after the Warsaw and Lodz ghetto.

Lviv ghetto
Lviv ghetto in the spring of 1942
Location	Lviv
Period of existence	November 8, 1941 - June 1, 1943
The number of prisoners	100,000
Judenrat Chair	Jozef Parnassus

On November 8, 1941, German authorities ordered the organization of the Lviv ghetto. Jews were ordered to move to the ghetto until December 15, 1941. During this time, 5,000 old and sick Jews were killed. By the beginning of 1942, there were more than 100,000 Jews in the ghetto. The Jewish police numbered up to 500 people and ensured internal law and order in the Jewish ghettos , participated in raids, carried out escort during the resettlement and deportation of Jews to camps, ensured the execution of orders of the occupation authorities, etc. Lawyer Jozef Parnas became the chairman of the Judenrat . During the summer of 1941, Jewish property was looted, synagogues were burned, and the Jews themselves were sent to forced labor. In late October, Parnassus was shot for refusing to compile lists of Jews for the camps.

In the winter of 1941-1942 , the Nazis began sending Jews from the Lviv ghetto to the camps. In March 1942, 15,000 people were taken to Belzec . Most of them were old and religious people, women, children. Officially, this was called an “action against antisocial elements”.

After this “action”, about 86,000 Jews officially remained in the ghetto. In addition, there were a large number of “illegal immigrants”. Workshops were created in which Jews worked for the Wehrmacht , Luftwaffe and the German administration.

On July 8, 1942, 7,000 Jews were taken to the Yanovsky camp. In August, more than 50,000 were sent to Belzec.

By the beginning of September 1942, about 65,000 Jews remained in the ghetto, of which approximately 15,000 were "illegal immigrants." Some Jews were hiding in the sewers of the city, where they were helped by Lviv Poles and Ukrainians.

Several thousand children were rescued by activists of the Polish government organization Zhegota (Zegota - Jewish Relief Council in the Occupied Territory of Poland).

Jews were sheltered in monasteries and churches of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church . Among the survivors in the Holy Jurassic Cathedral in Lviv was the chief Orthodox rabbi of the city, David Kahane, and the family of the reformist rabbi of the city of Ezekiel Levin .

In November, 5,000 Jews were sent to the Yanovsky concentration camp and Belzhets . Systematically destroyed unemployed Jews. Between January 5 and 7, 1943 , the Lviv ghetto officially became a Jewish camp. Up to 20,000 Jews, including members of the disbanded Jewish Council, were executed. The Germans announced that only Jews with a “work card” could be in the ghetto. During the cleansing of the ghetto, the Germans burned the houses in which the Jews hid. Many burned alive.

The labor camp in the ghetto lasted until June 1, 1943 . During the liquidation of the camp, the Jews put up armed resistance, killing and injuring several police officers. The liquidation involved units of the SS and the German police, the Hitler Youth . About 7,000 Jews were taken to Yanov, most of them were shot in Sands. 3,000 Jews were killed during the liquidation of the ghetto itself.

When the Soviet troops captured Lviv on July 27, 1944 , there were less than 300 Jews who were hiding in the city and sewers.

Prisoner of the Lviv ghetto and Yanovsky camp, surviving after their liquidation 2007		The current view of the territory of the Yanovsky camp (now a correctional institution)		Monument to the victims of the Holocaust on Vyacheslav Chernovol Avenue