M.52.DALO - Documentation of the State Archives of the Lwow Region

M.52.DALO - Documentation of the State Archives of the Lwow Region
 
 History of the Archives:
 
 The State Archives of the Lwow Region was established in December 1939 on the basis of the State Archives of Lwow. The archive was called the Regional Historical Archives in Lwow until 1941. It was called the State Archive of the Lwow Region during 1941-1958, and was called the Regional State Archives in Lwow during 1958-1980. As of 1959 the documentation that was in the Regional Archives in Drogobych was transferred to it. Since 1980 it has been called the State Archives of the Lwow Region.
 
 The Sub-Record Group includes documentation of the occupation authorities and the Ukrainian Police, documentation of Jewish organizations active in Lwow before the Soviet occupation, and documentation of the Judenrat, from the German occupation period; documentation of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission regarding the suppression and murder of Jews in the Lwow region during 1941-1944.
 
 Before World War II, Lwow was the third largest city in Poland, after Warsaw and Lodz. The Jewish population of Lwow was approximately 100,000 Jews at the time. 
 
 Between World War I and World War II, Lwow was the center of Jewish political activity in which the Bund, Agudat Israel and Zionist Parties participated as well as the youth movements which were associated with them. Jews were also members of the Polish Communist Party. Under the auspices of these political parties, a wide range of social activities took place in Lwow. The economic situation of the Lwow Jews began to deteriorate during this period, and many Jews were in need of help from Jewish social welfare organizations and non-interest loan funds. The Jewish community had several savings and loans associations, as well as workers unions. 
 
 A wide range of Jewish educational institutions existed in Lwow: kindergartens, schools in various languages of instruction - Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, and ultra-Orthodox and Zionist elementary schools and kindergartens in Yiddish, and vocational training schools and other types of high schools. Most of the Jewish children, in any event, were educated in the Polish public schools. Lwow was an important center for Hebrew newspapers. Several Jewish sports associations were active in Lwow. 
 
 The Red Army entered Lwow on 20 September 1939. At the outbreak of the war, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees sought refuge in Lwow from other places in Poland, and the Jewish population of Lwow grew to 230,000 or 240,000 people. With the Soviet occupation, the private ownership of businesses and property were cancelled, and most of the industrial activities were nationalized. The Jewish community institutions were closed, and Jews were permitted to gather officially in public only in the synagogues. In the schools, the curriculum was changed to the Soviet curriculum, and the Jewish political parties and youth movements were dispersed.
 
 During late June-early July 1940, the Soviet authorities deported thousands of Jews from Lwow into the interior of the Soviet Union, including many of the refugees, on suspicion that they were untrustworthy toward the Soviet regime. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and in parallel the retreat of the Red Army, Jews escaped from Lwow in the direction of the East, and when the city of Lwow fell to the Germans, an estimated 160,000 Jews remained in the city. 
 
 The German forces occupied Lwow on 30 June 1941, and immediately started the persecution of the Jews. Members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) immediately started to detain Jewish men and to torture them in the Police stations. Some of the Jews were transferred by force to NKVD prisons in order to bury the victims of the Soviet regime. Many Jews were beaten to death and murdered by policemen and local residents. Several thousand Jews were murdered during pogroms in July and August 1941. On 15 July 1941, anti-Jewish decrees were imposed on the Jews of Lwow, including the wearing of a badge on their clothing and travel restrictions. On 27 July 1941, by order of the German Army authorities the Ukrainian mayor of Lwow, Georg Polanskyi, carried out the order to the Jewish community to establish a temporary Jewish council. Following the refusal by several Jewish public figures to serve at the head of the council, Iosif Parnas, a known lawyer and former Austrian Army officer, was chosen for the position.
 
 On 01 August 1941, the Germans declared the annexation of East Galicia to the Generalgouvernement. Following this, the temporary Jewish council was turned officially into the Judenrat and the number of its members was increased. The Judenrat established its organizational structure into departments, and it numbered approximately 1,000 workers in August 1941. The number of workers increased to 4,000 in 1942, and increased in size later. The Judenrat had 23 departments, with its Works department having the main function of the supply of Jewish forced laborers. The Housing department had the function of arranging substitute housing for Jews who had been evicted from their homes even before the establishment of the ghetto. The Supply department supplied the Germans various items, such as furniture and household equipment. The Welfare department attempted to alleviate the hunger and various shortages suffered by the Jews. 
 
 In September 1941, Josef Szerynski, the commander of the Jewish Police in Warsaw, was brought to Lwow in order to establish a similar organization in Lwow. Within two months' time, the Jewish Police force grew and numbered 500 personnel. Parnas served as the chairman of the Judenrat until late October 1941, when he was executed for his refusal to supply an additional 500 Jews to a labor camp in addition to those whom he had already supplied. His assistant, Adolf Rotfeld, served as the head of the Judenrat until his death in February 1942, and Henrik Landsberg, a lawyer and a public figure, was appointed in his place.
 
 The Judenrat was not permitted to establish educational or cultural activities. Young Jews, however, organized themselves unofficially in private homes, in order to continue their studies. The youth movements likewise secretly established cultural activities. A group of historians, including Yaakov Schall, supplied documents and began to write about the experiences of the Jews of Lwow during the German occupation, but these documents were lost when Schall was murdered during the "Aktion" that took place in August 1942.
 
 Regarding the establishment of the Lwow Ghetto, its institutions and the Lwow Ghetto life:
 
 According to the order given by Karl Lasch, the Nazi governor of the Galicia region, an official order was published on 15 November 1941, regarding the establishment of a Jewish residential quarter in Lwow, and the Jews were allotted one month's time to move there. By request of the mayor of Lwow, Polanskyi, the quarter was established in two slum neighborhoods far from the center of the city. The Jews were allotted only one route to reach the quarter, and at the place where the route passed under a bridge, the Jews were habitually exposed to acts of abuse and robbery by the Germans and Ukrainians. Following the "Aktion" of November 1941 in Lwow and rumors that the Germans intended to deport Jews only from the areas that had previously been under Soviet occupation, many Jews escaped from Lwow. At this stage the Germans had not planned to concentrate all of the Jews of Lwow in a Jewish quarter, which was not hermetically closed, and the Jews who had not yet moved to the quarter before the established time thus received a short time extension. By late 1941, approximately 110,000 Jews remained in Lwow.
 
 The sanitation and economic situation of the Jews deteriorated in accordance with the frequent demands for ransom payments, the confiscation of property and the kidnapping of Jews to forced labor. Many Jews died of hunger or starvation. The Judenrat searched for ways to cope with the situation and, among other activities, it established soup kitchens, hospitals, infirmaries and sanitation stations. Professor Ludwig Fleck, who worked in one of the hospitals in the Lwow Ghetto, succeeded in developing a vaccine against typhus. On the initiative of German industrialists and in coordination with the Judenrat, large factories were established in Lwow at the start of 1942, including a factory to process scrap metal and ammunition factories. These factories supplied work to thousands of Jews, and to a certain degree they protected the Jews from the transports that were sent that year (in 1942).
 
 Due to the lack of cooperation by some of the Jewish policemen in the implementation of the "Aktions", the Germans purged the Jewish Police service and reorganized it. Approximately 200 Jewish policemen were deported to Belzec camp or to labor camps, and several of the Judenrat clerks were dismissed from their work. Following the "Aktion" of March-April 1942, a census was taken of the Jewish population in Lwow. Essential workers were given special armbands marked with the letter "A". Following this "Aktion", the Jews of Lwow attempted to rescue themselves by obtaining forged documents, and most of the Jews who succeeded in obtaining such documents attempted to leave Lwow. Many other Jews who did not have the possibility of escaping started to prepare hiding places for themselves.
 
 For weeks following the "Asocial Aktion", the Germans demanded the concentration of all of the Jews of Lwow in one place and to re-establish the area of the Jewish quarter into narrower borders. In a memorandum dated 22 April 1942, it is mentioned that approximately 10,000 Aryans were still residing in the area intended for the ghetto, while 15,000 Jews remained outside the ghetto area. During the "Aktions" that continued at the same time, many Jews were murdered.
 
 The Germans carried out the large "Aktion" in Lwow during 10-23 August 1942, in which they deported most of the Jews of Lwow to Belzec camp. On 24 August 1942, the Lwow municipal administration ordered the construction of a fence that was 2.5 meters tall, in order to close the remaining Jews in the Jewish residential quarter within its boundaries. The Jews were ordered to build the fence and to finance its establishment on their own. The work on the construction of the ghetto's fence was completed in early September 1942. The area of the Jewish quarter, which was now officially turned into a ghetto, was severely decreased. Every Jew who was captured outside the ghetto fence from then on was to be given a death sentence. Following the decrease of the ghetto's area, there was severe overcrowding in the ghetto. Jews were forced to reside in attics, cellars, storerooms and tents. The residents used bunk beds and each bed was occupied for two or three shifts. The transfer of the non-Jews to outside the ghetto took weeks, and this caused arguments with them. The medical services that were established by the Jews of Lwow collapsed almost completely following the large "Aktion". 
 
 At the start of September 1942, before the sealing of the Lwow Ghetto, the chairman of the Judenrat, Landberg, along with other members of the Judenrat and 11 Jewish policemen, were murdered in a public hanging in Lwow. Erich Engels, the commander of the Gestapo in Lwow, supervised the hanging. The Germans appointed Eduard Eberson in place of Landsberg, and they changed the composition of the Judenrat in a manner that would guarantee greater obedience to their demands. The replacement of the personnel greatly weakened the status of the Judenrat in the eyes of the ghetto residents.
 
 On 18 November 1942, the Germans completed an additional census of the ghetto and marked a list of approximately 12,000 Jews by code letters that expressed each Jew's level of importance related to the needs of the German war efforts. Following the "Aktion" that took place the same day, ghetto inmates who were employed were concentrated in a section of the ghetto which now resembled a labor camp. The remainder of the ghetto residents, who were designated for additional "Aktions", were concentrated in the more neglected areas of the ghetto, and the Germans ceased to supply these residents with food, which was already a meager amount.
 
 The "Aktions", transports and random murder of dozens or perhaps hundreds of Jews continued. Individual Jews were sent to labor camps, and others were removed to outside the city and murdered in the area of the sands near the Jewish cemetery. 
 
 "Aktions":
 
 On the first day of the occupation, 30 June 1941, a pogrom broke out in Lwow and continued until 03 July 1941. The pogrom, called the "Prisons Aktion", broke out against the background of a rumor that Bolsheviks and Jews had murdered political prisoners in Lwow before the Red Army departed from the city. The acts of kidnapping and murder on the street of at least 4,000 Jews were carried out by local Ukrainians under the supervision of a German Einsatzgruppen commando. This commando unit, under the supervision of Guenther Hermann, filled an important role in the incitement that lead to the pogroms. The murder of Jews in Lwow continued during the entire month of July 1941 and reached its height during 25-27 July, when Ukrainians murdered approximately 2,000 Jews in a pogrom called by the name of "Petliura Days", in honor of the Ukrainian leader, Symon Petliura.
 
 At the start of August 1941, approximately 1,000 Jews of the Jewish community's leadership were captured as hostages, and the Jewish community was allotted ten days to pay a ransom fee of 20 million rubles. The sum was raised with much difficulty but, despite this, the hostages disappeared and apparently they were murdered.
 
 During a selection held on 15 November 1941, elderly and sick Jews were taken to an old barracks, where most of them were murdered. Others were taken to forests near Lwow and murdered there. Approximately 5,000 Jews were murdered during this "Aktion", which was called the "Bridge of Death Aktion" (Todesbrueckenaktion), administered by the Lwow authorities in cooperation with the German Police under the command of Albert Ulrich. Thousands of other Jews were murdered later, during kidnappings that continued until mid-December 1941. The Germans started, at the same time, to send many Jews to labor camps in the vicinity, mainly a camp on Janowska Street, inside the boundaries of Lwow. Many Jews perished in these camps or were sent from these camps to death camps.
 
 In March 1942, the commander of the German Police ordered the Judenrat to prepare a list of 20,000 Jews - the unemployed and "asocial" Jews, as it was termed - who were designated by the Germans for "resettlement in the East". An argument developed among the Jews, whether or not to cooperate. A delegation of four rabbis, lead by Rabbi David Kahana, went to the Judenrat in order to convince its heads against the preparation of the list. In the end, the chairman of the Judenrat was forced to answer to the demand and to submit a list. On the day of the start of the "Aktion", 19 March 1942, the Judenrat clerks and policemen started to arrest Jews who were being supported by welfare and Jews who were without work permits, and they handed them over to the Germans. At the end of March 1942, because the quota had not yet been filled, the Germans took charge of the administration of the "Aktion", putting Ulrich at its head, and they enlisted Ukrainians to participate in the implementation of the "Aktion". They completed the campaign on 01 April 1942, on the eve of Pesach 5702, and they kidnapped Jews from their homes during the Pesach Seder. Altogether, approximately 15,000 Jews - most of them children, women and elderly people - were sent to Belzec camp and their extermination.
 
 On 20 May 1942, all of the Jewish veterinarians of Lwow were taken to Janowska camp, where they were murdered. On 24-25 May 1942, a special SS unit under the command of the Gestapo commander of Lwow, Erich Engels, broke into the Jewish quarter. Within several hours, 2,000 Jews were detained and sent to Janowska camp; during the selection made at the camp, only 130 of the Jews were selected for labor, and the remainder of the Jews were murdered at the nearby sand dunes.
 
 The large "Aktion" in Lwow started on 10 August 1942 and continued until 23 August 1942. The implementation and supervision of the large "Aktion" was carried out by Friedrich Katzmann, the SS and Police commander of the Galicia region, and his assistant Engels. Thousands of Jews were detained each day and taken to Janowska, where they underwent a selection by SS officers under the command of Ernst Inquart and, following the selection, most of the Jews were sent to Belzec camp. Many Jews attempted to hide inside the ghetto, but the Germans discovered most of the Jews' hiding places. It is estimated that during this "Aktion", between 40,000-50,000 Jews were murdered. Following this "Aktion", 50,000 Jews remained in Lwow according to the official count, but in actuality there were approximately 65,000 Jews remaining in Lwow. Among those murdered in this "Aktion" were most of the orphans and the sick people. Historian Yaakov Schall was also one of the victims of this "Aktion". 
 
 On 18 November 1942, following the completion of a census held in the Lwow Ghetto, approximately 5,000 Jews were sent to Belzec camp, and another unknown number of Jews were shot to death during an "Aktion" that continued for three days under the command of German Police officer Carl Woebke. 
 
 During the "Aktion" carried out on 05 December 1942, German policemen under the orders of Engels set on fire entire buildings and streets in the ghetto, in order to force the residents to exit them, and these people were then deported and murdered. During another "Aktion" that was aimed against Jewish laborers, the male laborers were sent to Janowska camp and the female laborers were shot to death.
 
 In another "Aktion" that was carried out by the Germans during 05-07 January 1943, between 15,000-20,000 Jews were murdered - most of them at the sand dunes - and some of them were deported to Sobibor extermination camp, where they perished.
 
 Resistance:
 
 Communist underground groups were active in Lwow from the start of the German occupation, and several Jewish activists were among them. During the large "Aktion" of August 1942, following an unsuccessful attempt to organize a resistance, the Germans shot to death most of the members of an underground group who were captured in the city, including approximately 40 Jews among them.
 
 Following the large "Aktion", Jewish underground groups, several of them Communists, started to organize escapes to the nearby forests, with the aim of establishing underground cells that would fight the Germans. Small groups of young people succeeded to escape, but most of them were captured and murdered, or were returned to the ghetto by force.
 
 In the Lwow Ghetto itself, attempts were made to obtain weapons and to establish fighting groups. Several issues of an underground newspaper were distributed. An underground cell that was active among one of the units of the Jewish Police did not succeed in coordinating its activities with the rest of the underground members in the ghetto. 
 
 "Julag": 
 
 Following the "Aktion" of January 1943, the area of the Lwow Ghetto was again decreased, and its official status was changed to "Julag" (an abbreviation of "Judenlager" - a camp for Jews), whose administration was transferred to the SS. On 30 January 1943, the members of the Judenrat were ordered to present themselves before the authorities in the roll-call yard, along with their family members; six of them responded and when they and the others were captured, almost all of them were executed, including the Judenrat chairman, Eberson. Thus, most of the Judenrat was liquidated, and from that point onwards, there were no longer any representative factors remaining for the Jews in the Julag. By order of Katzmann, all of the administrative authorities of the Julag were transferred to an SS officer named Mansfeld. The final section of the Jewish administration that survived was the Jewish Police service, which was ordered in most part to maintain cleanliness, to assist in the administration of a population census, and to escort laborers to work. On 13 February 1943, a selection was held among the Jewish policemen. Approximately 200 were permitted to remain in the camp, and the other policemen were murdered, along with their family members, in the area of the sand dunes.
 
 Each day, approximately 20,000 Jews were escorted to labor by a Jewish orchestra that played according to Manfeld's order. Women were executed at close intervals, but there was a serious ban on the presence of their children during the murder. In February or March 1943, Mansfeld was dismissed from his position on suspicion of corruption. His successor in the position of commander of the Julag was Josef Grzimek, who received an order to liquidate the phenomenon of "illegal Jews" who still resided in the Julag. Grzimek imposed severe discipline and executed hundreds of Jews. In early March 1943 approximately 1,600 adults and children were murdered, after they were found to be unfit for labor. On 17 March 1943, approximately another 1,000 Jews were murdered in the sands, during the "Revenge Campaign" for the murder of an SS officer by a Jew named Tadek Drutkovski. In late March 1943, approximately 600 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
 
 Two relatively small "Aktions" were implemented during the following weeks; in one of the "Aktions", more than 40 children of the Jewish policemen were murdered, and in another "Aktion" the Julag hospital was liquidated. The execution of Jews in the Julag and the transports to Janowska camp continued in May 1943. The gates of the Julag were closed often for several entire days; Jews were not removed for labor, and groups of laborers who had departed for labor earlier were sent directly to Janowska camp. On 23 May 1943, approximately 2,000 inmates from Janowska camp were murdered in the sands, in order to make room for the deportees from the Julag.
 
 With the knowledge that the liquidation of the Julag was anticipated at any moment, its residents searched for ways to protect themselves, mainly by the preparation of hiding places. In the days before the "Aktion", the escape attempts increased and the underground prepared to fight the Germans.
 
 The liquidation "Aktion" started on 02 June 1943. Underground members resisted the German and Ukrainian units that entered the Julag, and during a battle that lasted for two and a half hours, underground members killed eight Gestapo men. The Germans retreated and changed their tactics: instead of removing the Jews from their homes, the Germans decided to explode the buildings or to set the buildings on fire with their residents inside. The "Aktion" continued until 23 June 1943; this was based originally on lists of 12,000 residents, but the Germans were surprised to find close to 20,000 residents there. Many of the Jews were murdered, perished or committed suicide when the houses in the ghetto became ruins before their eyes. Approximately 7,000 Jews were transferred to Janowska camp, and following a selection many of the Jews were murdered there. 
 
 Several weeks after the liquidation of the Lwow Ghetto, the Germans continued to comb Lwow in a search for Jews who were hiding. Janowska camp, in which the last concentration of Jews in Lwow remained, was liquidated in late November 1943. During spring 1944, small groups of Jewish skilled professionals who had been captured in the vicinity of Lwow were concentrated, and they were still considered to be "essential workers". Despite this, with the approach of the Red Army to the city of Lwow in June 1944, most of the laborers in Janowska camp were murdered, and some of the laborers were transferred to other camps to the west.
 
 The Red Army returned and conquered Lwow on 27 July 1944.
 
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 1. Encyclopedia of the Ghettos
 
 2. A. Kruglov, Catastrophe of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944, The Encyclopaedic Directory, Kharkov, 2001.