The city of Lviv, in what is now western Ukraine, was greatly impacted by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Prior to the outbreak of fighting, it was part of Poland and known as Lwów. It was then a diverse, multi-ethnic city, and its inhabitants included large communities of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and others. The Nazi genocide sought to erase the presence of entire peoples through forced relocation and mass murder. These acts of evil were brought to an end by the victory of the Soviet Union, and Lviv remained under Communist control until 1991.
In 1939, the Germans invaded and occupied most of Poland. The remainder of Poland, including Lviv, fell under the control of the Soviet Union. In 1941, the Germans broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact and attacked the Soviets. The Germans seized Lviv and renamed it Lemberg. The Nazis appropriated a 1922 map of the city created by the famous Polish cartographer Eugeniusz Romer (1871-1954) and used it to plan their “Nazification” of the city. To that end, streets were renamed to celebrate the occupation. New names included Wehrmacht Strasse (“Armed Forces Street”), Siegfried Strasse (after the Germanic literary hero) and Adolf Hitler Ring.
In 1941, a labor camp known as Janowska was established in the northwest corner of the city, where more than 100,000 people were interned and forced to build arms for the Nazis. Camps like Janowska were state secrets and omitted from official maps, as shown in the German military map below.
By extreme contrast, the Nazis lived comfortably. Spas were built for both the army and the SS guards. Elsewhere, the city was used for garrisoning troops and as a place where soldiers took temporary leave from official duties.
In July 1944, the Red Army forced the Germans out the city and liberated those who were imprisoned, including among them the famous postwar Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The Soviets unearthed atrocities committed at the camp and on the fields behind it. The city was again renamed Lviv and incorporated into the Soviet Union. Today, the city is part of Ukraine and the population is predominantly Ukrainian along with small Russian and Jewish communities.
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To be clear, the acts of evil did not only occur under Nazi occupation. From 1939 to 1941, the Soviets murdered tens of thousands residents who they considered threats to the Communist dictatorship, and sentenced over 400,000 Ukrainians and Poles to the Gulag in Siberia. Upon returning in 1944, the Soviets began a systematic policy of arrests, torture, and exile, affecting millions of Ukrainians and Poles who disappeared into the night never to be seen again. Curious that there is no mention of these atrocities committed by the Soviets.
Wasyl Wytiuk – The title of the article is “Lviv and the Janowski Concentration Camp” – it’s not about Russian communists, it’s about how Lviv was changed by the Germans. Communists were mostly omitted because they aren’t the focus of the story, not because of any prejudice.
Wasyl Wytiuk – the Soviets sentenced the kulaks to the gulags because they burned and sabotaged farms, wheats, cattles, etc in a rebellion against the Soviet collectivization of farms to stop the famine, this contributed and exacerbated the Ukrainian famine which you would undoubtedly dubbed the “Holodomor” and blamed it on the Soviets instead. Nice history revisionism.