The city of Lviv occupies an important place in this story. Through the nineteenth century, it was generally known as Lemberg, located on the eastern outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Soon after World War I, it became part of newly independent Poland, called Lwów, until the outbreak of World War II, when it was occupied by the Soviets, who knew it as Lvov. In July 1941, the Germans unexpectedly conquered the city and made it the capital of Distrikt Galizien in the General Government, known once more as Lemberg. After the Red Army vanquished the Nazis in the summer of 1944, it became part of Ukraine and was called Lviv, the name that is generally used today. Exceptionally, if you fly to the city from Munich, the airport screens identify the destination as Lemberg.
Lemberg, Lviv, Lvov, and Lwów are the same place. The name has changed, as has the composition and nationality of its inhabitants, but the location and the buildings have remained. This is even as the city changed hands, no fewer than eight times in the years between 1914 and 1945. What to call the city in the pages of this book posed a number of difficulties, so I have used the name by which it was referred to by those who controlled it at the time of which I am writing. (I generally adopt the same approach for other places: nearby Żółkiew is now Zhovkva, after an interregnum from 1951 to 1991, when it was called Nesterov in honor of a Russian World War I hero, the first pilot to fly a loop.)
I thought of calling it Lemberg throughout, because the word evokes a gentle sense of history, as well as being the city of my grandfather’s childhood. Yet such a choice could be taken as sending a signal, which might cause offense to others, all the more unfortunate at a time when the territory of Ukraine is being fought over with Russia. The same went for the name Lwów, which it was called for two decades, and also for Lviv, which had been the name of the city for just a few tumultuous days in November 1918. Italy never controlled the city, but if it had, it would be called Leopolis, the City of Lions.