As already mentioned, in the morning of 30 June 1941, German and Ukrainian troops discovered numerous bodies of prisoners who had been murdered by the NKVD. The corpses were in the cells of four prisons, and in mass graves in the prison yards. Estimates of the number of corpses ranged from 2,800[899] to 4,000;[900] the lower figure seems more likely. The majority of the NKVD victims were apparently Ukrainians, about a quarter of the victims were Poles, and there was an unknown number of Jews.[901] A few prisoners, who survived the NKVD massacre in the prisons, had escaped after the Soviet army left and before the Germans came in.[902] Rumors about the massacres and tortures in the prisons had circulated even before the Germans arrived on 30 June, inspected the prisons, forced Jews to exhume bodies, and to bring out the first corpses from the cells.[903] According to Dr. Georg Saeltzer and a German officer, some of the bodies showed signs of torture.[904]

As early as 28 June 1941, two Ukrainian defectors informed the German Army that “two days ago there were riots in Lviv, during which Jews and communists were murdered.”[905] However, no other documents confirm that riots took place in Lviv before 30 June. According to Erwin Schulz, leader of Einsatzkommando 5, Hitler ordered a reprisal action against Lviv Jews for the NKVD massacre, but it is not clear

whether the pogrom was organized on account of this order.[906] On 30 June, the Germans and OUN-B activists began using the corpses of the NKVD victims to provoke violence. This resulted in the pogrom, but the most brutal and humiliating events took place the next day and continued on 2 July.[907]

On 30 June 1941, the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei) noted that the people of Lviv were enthusiastic about the coming of the German troops and were bitter about the “infamous action of the Bolshevists” and the “Jews who live in the city and who collaborated with the Bolsheviks.”[908] A German officer wrote to his wife on 30 June: “The Russians and Jews ruled over others cruelly and carried out massacres in the prisons.” He also noted that the Ukrainians were in a mood that could easily become a pogrom.[909] In the yard of the Brygidki prison, company commander Hans Schmidt watched how “crowds of Jews or maybe other inhabitants of Lviv” carried corpses from the prison basements and placed them in the yard. Later the same day and in the same prison, he observed how the Jews were mistreated and beaten. He was told that the Jews “draw on themselves the hate of the people because they collaborated with the Russians and denounced the victims.”[910]

The powerful stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism” was an important element of both OUN-B and Nazi propaganda. It made the Ukrainian population—at whom the OUN-B propaganda was directed—believe that it was the Jews who were responsible for the atrocities of the Soviet regime, in particular the mass killings of prisoners after 22 June 1941.[911] That Jews were among the victims of the NKVD, that they were not substantially overrepresented in the NKVD, and that they did not profit more or suffer less than other ethnic groups under the Soviet occupation did not impress the nationalists, who blamed the Jews for the NKVD murders and believed that the Jews ruled the Soviet Union and were responsible for the famine in 1932‒1933.[912]

In connection with the “Jewish Bolshevism” stereotype and the events of 1 July 1941, Kurt Lewin, a survivor of the pogrom, made the following observation, which he included in his memoirs in 1945, “A young representative of the Herrenvolk [master race] with an intelligent physiognomy—but disfigured with a mischievous smile—came to us and said: ‘Nu, Juden die Rache ist süss. [So, Jews, revenge is sweet.]’ I just didn’t know what the revenge was for.”[913]

 

Stefan Szende (Adolf Folkman), another Jewish survivor, wrote in his memoirs in March 1944 that, on 1 July 1941:

German posters and Polish and Ukrainian leaflets based on the German posters appeared in the city. The German military commando used them to inform the Ukrainian and Polish populations that, in the prisons, corpses of thousands of Ukrainians and Poles were found. All were killed by the Jewish Bolsheviks. Public feeling was agitated by horrible accusations against the Jews. The agitation fell on fruitful ground. In the whole city, robbing and looting hordes roamed. The Jews were equated with the Bolsheviks, actually only the Jews were deemed to be Bolsheviks. We were outlawed [vogelfrei]. ... Hundreds of Jews were dragged from their houses, thrashed, kicked, murdered. Other thousands were herded together to the prison on Zamarstynowska Street.[914]

In the early hours of 1 July 1941, by when the OUN-B state had already been proclaimed, Ukrainian militiamen forced their way into Jewish apartments. They frequently seized male Jews, and occasionally the whole family, and took them by force to the yards of the three prisons where the corpses of the NKVD’s victims had been found. Other militiamen seized Jews in the streets, while checking identity cards. One prison to which Jews were taken was on Zamarstynowska (Zamarstynivs’ka) Street, another was the Brygidki prison on Kazimierzowska (Horodots’ka) Street, and the third was on Łąckiego (Briullov) Street, close to the citadel. The Brygidki prison and the prison on Zamarstynowska Street were in the Jewish quarter. On the way to the prisons, the Jews were beaten by a furious crowd of both men and women, with fists, cudgels, canes, and other implements. Some of the Jews were forced to crawl on their knees.[915] Before the gate to the prison, pogromists stood in two rows and beat the Jews who had to go between the rows into the yards. When the Jews arrived in the yards, they were forced to carry the already-decomposing corpses from the cells in the basement and to put them in rows in the prison yards. Sometimes, after the Jewish men had carried them outside, Jewish women were compelled to wash the corpses and kiss their hands[916] in order to demonstrate to the crowds that the Jews were responsible for Soviet crimes and should now pay for it.

The Jews who carried the corpses from the cells were beaten, frequently to death, by Germans and Ukrainians, with rifle butts, metal bars, cudgels, spades, and other objects. During the pogrom, Ukrainian militiamen collected more and more Jews and drove them to the prison yards. There they replaced those already beaten to death, whose corpses were piled at the edge of the prison yard, next to those of the prisoners killed by the NKVD. Kurt Lewin, who was forced to work in the Brygidki prison, was especially afraid of an elegantly dressed man in a beautiful embroidered shirt, frequently worn by Ukrainian patriots, who

beat with an ironclad cane. After a while, he beat only against the heads. With every hit he wrenched off strips of skin. He put some people’s eyes out, wrenched off ears. When the cane broke, he immediately took a large charred piece of wood and smashed my neighbor’s skull. The skull broke and the brain splattered in all directions, also on my face and clothes.[917]

The man in the embroidered shirt seems to have been a typical “victim” of the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism and the stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism.” Herman Kac, who was also forced to work in the yard of the Brygidki prison, recalled in 1947 that “Germans and Ukrainians mistreated us horribly and blamed us for the NKVD murders. They lined the Jews up to be shot.” Kac recalled being the forty-eighth in line. As a German soldier was taking aim at him, a German officer came and said “Enough for today.”[918]

The Jews were forced to work in the Brygidki prison until about 9 p.m. Lewin estimated that of the approximately 2,000 Jews crowded into the Brygidki prison on 1 June, about eighty survived. Before the Germans allowed them to go home, soldiers of the Nachtigall battalion came to the yard and mistreated the remaining Jews for a while. A German soldier threw a grenade against a group of Jews, and German soldiers continued killing the wounded victims in the yard. Before the survivors were allowed to leave the yard, they were told to come back the next day, at 4 a.m.[919]

In the two other prisons, Jews were treated a similar way. Stefania Cang-Schutzman saw how the Jews in the Łąckiego Street prison were beaten and otherwise mistreated, how women were undressed, and how pregnant women were beaten in the stomach. The Ukrainians ordered the Jews to give up jewels, money, and all other valuable objects that they possessed.[920] Another survivor from the Łąckiego Street prison remembered that a German officer interrupted the violence of the crowd with the comment: “We are not Bolsheviks.” People watching the mistreatment of the Jews from the roofs demanded, however, that the Jews in the prison yard be killed.[921] Alfred Monaster wrote in his testimony that on 1 July, in the prison on Łąckiego Street, beautiful Jewish women were selected, raped, and killed.[922]

Zygmunt Tune and his brother were taken by Ukrainian militiamen from their apartment to the prison on Zamarstynowska Street. Before the entrance, they were beaten by a crowd of angry people, and later in the prison yard by some Nachtigall battalion soldiers. They were forced to give away all valuable objects. A group of Ukrainians then beat them with sticks. Afterwards they were forced to clean the yard with their bare hands. All the time, more and more Jews, in poorer and poorer health, were forced into the yard. At about 2 p.m. some Germans brought a machine-gun in order to shoot the Jews but were prevented by an officer of the Gestapo. At about 8 p.m., the Jews who had survived until then were allowed to leave the yard. A German soldier told them that he could not protect them from the Ukrainians and suggested that they hid in the woods.[923]

Jews were beaten and killed not only in the three prison yards but also on the way there and in many other places in the city. They were forced to clean the streets, exactly as in Vienna in March 1938, and in several places in Poland after September 1939.[924] Company commander Hans Schmidt observed how “Jewish women, on their knees, had to pick splinters of glass from the sidewalk with their [bare] hands.”[925] Izydor Ferber saw how Jews in the market square were forced to clean the paving-stones with their handkerchiefs, and how they were beaten severely.[926] Kazimiera Poraj was in the market square when “Ukrainian-speaking German soldiers” forced a group of Jews, among them her mother, to clean the toilets with their own clothes. At the same time, they were beaten mercilessly with cables. A group of Jews had to pick splinters of glass from the streets and put them into two carts, also while being beaten with cables.[927] German officers saw a group of women being mistreated by the

Fig. 17. One of the victims of the Lviv pogrom. Wiener Library.

Ukrainian militiamen in the market square.[928] A man was forced to clean horse manure from the street, by putting it in his hat.[929] A group of Jews were made to crawl on hands and knees through the streets.[930] Jews were thrown into the street from the windows of their apartments.[931] In one yard, the German soldier Hermann Teske saw a group of Jews with bloody noses. A pogromist told him that it was customary during pogroms to mark Jews by twisting their noses so hard that they broke. The soldier then witnessed how a pogromist did so.[932] Jacob Gerstenfeld observed from an apartment house window:

Old people, children and women [in a bomb crater] were forced, under a hail of blows, to wrench out the paving stones with their bare hands, and to move the dirt of the street from one place to another. One woman was tied to a man working nearby and they were forced by blows to run in opposite directions. A teenage boy fainted under blows, and others were called to bury the apparent corpse alive. In this one place, I saw four or five people murdered. About 60 people were involved. Throughout the violence on the street, life went on in its usual routine. The passers-by stopped for a moment or two, some to laugh at the “ridiculous” look of the victims and went calmly on.[933]

The Nachtigall battalion, which was celebrated by the pogromists as the Stepan Bandera battalion, did not play a major role in the pogrom but some members were involved. After marching into Lviv on 30 June 1941, the battalion secured the radio station and the three prisons in which the NKVD left the corpses.[934] One soldier from the battalion declared that “some soldiers [from his battalion] committed excesses” on this day, after they were welcomed with flowers.[935] On the same day, Roman Shukhevych—the Ukrainian commander of the battalion—learned that his brother Iurii had been killed in one of the NKVD prisons. The next day, Iurii’s funeral took place.[936]

On 1 July 1941, a number of survivors saw Nachtigall soldiers beating Jews in front of and inside the yard of the prison on Zamarstynowska Street.[937] In Łąckiego Street and in the Brygidki prison on Kazimierzowska Street, Ukrainian-speaking soldiers in Wehrmacht uniforms were seen doing the same.[938] However, there is no absolute certainty that all the Ukrainians in German uniforms who were seen mistreating and killing Jews in the prison yards belonged to the Nachtigall. There were Ukrainians in German uniforms from other units in Lviv at that time, and also Ukrainian interpreters with the Wehrmacht, who were hostile to Jews and Poles, just like the Nachtigall soldiers.[939] On the way from Lviv to Vinnytsia, the Nachtigall battalion, according to the soldier Viktor Khar’kiv (“Khmara”), “shot all the Jews he met in two villages.”[940]

In 1960, a criminal investigation against the officer of the battalion, Theodor Oberländer, took place in the German Federal Republic. During the investigation, Oberländer confirmed that he saw soldiers from the Nachtigall battalion in front of a prison, who “encouraged the population to display the corpses outside.” He also testified that the Nachtigall soldiers from one company had a day off duty, but he did not mention that the soldiers mistreated and killed Jews.[941] Other German officers of the Nachtigall battalion testified similarly to Oberländer.[942] After a careful investigation of the pogrom and the participation of the Nachtigall battalion in this atrocity, the German state prosecutor (Oberstaatsanwalt) came to the conclusion that soldiers from the second company of the battalion “in all probability” participated in the pogrom and were “guilty of the murder of numerous Jews.”[943] The prosecutor, however, closed the proceedings against Oberländer, because he did not find any evidence that Oberländer issued an order to the Nachtigall soldiers to kill Jews. Nor did the prosecutor initiate any proceeding against Nachtigall veterans, because he was not able to identify exactly which soldiers committed crimes.[944]

Hryn’okh, OUN-B member and chaplain of the Nachtigall battalion, was also interrogated during the same investigation against Oberländer. Like many other nationalists, he not only denied the involvement of the battalion in anti-Jewish violence but also stated that he did not notice that a pogrom took place in Lviv at all. As to whether there were anti-Jewish riots in Lviv, Hryn’okh answered as follows: “I did not see anything like this, although during my stay in Lviv, I repeatedly walked and drove through the streets. I can also state with all certainty that nothing was reported to me.” After he heard the testimonies of other witnesses who described the pogrom, he stated: “I cannot exclude that something like this happened. I myself, however, as I have already said, did not see anything and did not hear anything.”[945]

Wilek Markiewicz watched from a window how some pogromists in Franciszek Smołka (Hryhorenko) Square competed to find more and more sophisticated tortures. He also noticed young Ukrainian peasant women who were more brutal than the men. One of the men forced a Jew to carry him on his shoulders, while beating him on the head with a cudgel, until the victim fell on the ground. He heard a woman scream: “People, let me go please. I haven’t done anything bad to anybody.” A number of male voices countered: “Don’t listen to her! Kill her immediately!”[946]

The pogromists also enjoyed making Jews perform “Bolshevik” rituals. Some were made to walk, singing Russian marching songs, and shouting praise to Stalin.[947] A crowd surrounded a group of 200 to 300 young Jewish men and women who, with raised hands, were forced to sing “the Russian communist song ‘My Moscow.’”[948] Near the citadel, Ukrainians escorted about a hundred men, their hands in the air, who were made to shout, “We want Stalin!” According to the survivor Kazimiera Poraj, all of them were killed.[949]

The films and photographs made by German soldiers during the pogrom contain very much the same information as the testimonies of the survivors. They show that women were kicked and were beaten in the face and elsewhere with sticks and tools. They were pulled by the hair and tossed from one pogromist to another. Many of the women were stripped naked and exposed to the mob, which made fun of them and mistreated them. Some were chased through the streets.[950] What the films do not show—but which we know from testimonies of survivors—is that women were raped, and pregnant women were hit and kicked in the stomach.[951]

As already mentioned, the most violent day of the pogrom was 1 July 1941 but the pogrom continued in many parts of the city on 2 July and lasted until the evening of that day. According to Monaster, the pogrom began in the Jewish quarter and spread the next day to other parts of the city.[952] On 2 July, an unknown number of Jews were assembled by the militiamen and members of the Einsatzkommandos in a sports field on Pełczyńska (Dmytra Vitovs’koho) Street. Of the assembled Jews, 2,500–3,000 were shot in the forests around Lviv by Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6 of Einsatzgruppe C, under the leadership of Otto Rasch. Felix Landau, member of an Einsatzkommando, wrote in his diary that the first Jews were shot on 2 July. On 3 July he wrote that “500 Jews came to be shot. 800 people were killed here in Lviv.”[953]

On 3 July 1941, Lejb Wieliczkier and his brother and father were taken from their apartment by Ukrainian militiamen, “to work.” They were led to the militia building. A group of Jews were already standing before the building, when the family arrived. The militiamen selected young Jews, took them to the basement, and beat them there with iron bars. Some of them did not stand up again. The rest were taken to the sports field on Pełczyńska Street. They were beaten and otherwise mistreated by the militiamen on the way. In front of the sports field, the Germans selected skilled craftsmen from among the Jews and sent them home. The rest were to enter the sports field, where they remained for two days without food and drink. During these two days, the Germans and Ukrainian militiamen frequently tortured, beat, and generally mistreated them. Lejb and his father watched as Jews were repeatedly loaded on trucks. Together with some other Jews, however, father and son were released two days later.[954]

On 4 July 1941 Simon Wiesenthal was one of about forty Jews who were arrested, taken to a prison, ordered to stand in a row with their faces against the wall, and waited to be executed. Unlike many others however, he did not die. Shortly before Wiesenthal was to have been shot, a superior ordered the executioner to leave off work for the day (Schluß für heute. Feierabend!). Imprisoned overnight and awaiting execution the next day, Wiesenthal was rescued by a Ukrainian militiaman who knew him from before the war.[955] On 7 July 1941, German soldiers seized Eliyahu Yones, together with other Jews in hiding, and ordered them to spread lime on the earth in one of the yards of the Brygidki prison. On arrival, Yones was overwhelmed by the extreme stench of decomposing corpses. He noticed that the ground under his feet was as soft as gum, had cracks five centimeters (two inches) wide, and could not absorb the number of corpses that were buried in the yard.[956]

After the pogrom, the Jews in Lviv had no rights and were vogelfrei. Their apartments were frequently looted while they were still living there. They were allowed to go into the streets to buy food and other products, only two days a week.[957] According to Henryk Szyper this rule was introduced by Iurii Polians’kyi, who was appointed mayor of Lviv by the Stets’ko government. German and Ukrainian police regularly arrested Jews in their apartments or in the streets and took them to perform various public works. Although the organized violence ceased in the evening of 2 June, Jews were further mistreated and killed on numerous occasions.[958]

The number of victims of the first pogrom, from 30 June to 2 July 1941, is hard to estimate. The Judenrat estimated that 2,000 Jews were killed during the first days of occupation in Lviv.[959] A German security report from 16 July said that “police captured and shot 7,000 Jews.”[960] Historians Dieter Pohl and Eliyahu Yones, who studied the pogrom, came to the conclusion that 4,000 Jews lost their lives,[961] while Christoph Mick, another historian who investigated this event, concluded that 7,000 to 8,000 Jews were killed.[962]

A reconstruction of the course of the pogrom shows that it was a well-organized action. The Ukrainian militia established by the OUN-B collaborated closely with German formations, which included units of the Sicherheitspolizei and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and the Einsatzkommandos of Einsatzgruppe C. The Germans must have coordinated the pogrom with the OUN-B, at the latest in the evening of 30 June 1941, shortly after they realized how popular and powerful the OUN-B in Lviv was and how they could manipulate the rage of the locals by means of the corpses left by the NKVD. Although the German and Ukrainian perpetrators did not leave any written documents concerning such preparations, other sources suggest otherwise. For example, according to one of the witnesses of the pogrom, a Ukrainian militiaman warned a Jewish woman, with whom he was in love, as to the danger. He did so on 1 July at 5 a.m., that is to say, a few hours before the main pogrom started.[963]

The behavior of individual German soldiers varied. Some of them filmed the pogrom. One reason for doing so was to place the blame for the violence on the local population.[964] Some Wehrmacht officers showed remorse. One gave a loaf of bread to a Jew.[965] Other German soldiers, humiliated, tortured, shot, or otherwise mistreated Jews, or explained to them that they were responsible for the pogrom.[966] Eliyahu Yones, who was forced to work in the Brygidki prison, commented on one German officer:

After the action [carrying out the corpses from the cells] a German officer came to us, took off his gas mask [which he carried because of the stench of the corpses] and delivered a speech to us, in which he said that, because of us, the Jews, “the whole world is bleeding,” that we instigated this war and because of us thousands of victims would fall in the battlefields. “Look what you did!” He shouted and pointed to the huge mass grave in the prison yard. We stood apathetically, we didn’t hear his words, and did not understand what he wanted from us.[967]

Another important group of perpetrators in the Lviv pogrom was the crowd. It consisted mainly of Ukrainians but also included Poles. Ukrainians were a minority in Lviv but, unlike Poles, they were not threatened by the OUN-B and were encouraged by Ukrainian propaganda to support the process of establishing the state and to take revenge on the Jews. Some Ukrainian pogromists came to Lviv from the villages and towns around the city. In addition to ideology, they were motivated by the opportunity to steal Jewish property, which was permitted during the pogrom.[968] Many young Ukrainians, students in particular, participated in the pogrom. Among the pogromists, Emanuel Brand recognized a Ukrainian student with whom he had studied at the Institute of Pedagogy in Lviv.[969] Dmytro Honta, a veteran of the First World War who wanted to join the OUN-B militia in Lviv, mentioned in his memoir that students volunteered for it.[970]

Poles also participated in the pogrom and were not just passive bystanders. However, they participated to a lesser extent than Ukrainians, although they outnumbered the Ukrainians in Lviv. Like the Ukrainians, the Poles found bodies of their relatives amongst the NKVD’s victims. Jews in Lviv noticed Poles among the pogromists and perceived them as dangerous, although not as dangerous as Ukrainians.[971] Maksymilian Boruchowicz remembered that Ukrainians were aggressive and that Poles were very distanced from Jews.[972] At one place in Lviv, Alizia Rachel Hader noticed that the mob mistreating Jews “seemed to be composed mainly of Ukrainians, but ... included some Poles.”[973] Kost’ Pan’kivs’kyi and Jozef Szrager also noticed Poles among the pogromists.[974] Ievhen Nakonechnyi remembered that some Poles donned yellow-and-blue armbands, but he did not remember Ukrainians participating in the pogrom, and he claimed that linking the OUN-B to the pogroms was anti-Ukrainian propaganda.[975] Jan Rogowski, a Polish high school teacher, remembered a Pole laughing about Jews who were beaten by Ukrainian militiamen.[976] In contrast to the pogrom of 1918 in Lviv, and the pogroms in the summer of 1941 in north-eastern Poland, Poles did not play a major role in the Lviv pogrom of 1941, because they were afraid of the Ukrainian militiamen and OUN-B activists. They were also less favored by the Germans than Ukrainians were.[977] During the night of 3–4 July 1941 in Lviv, a German security force, composed of members of the SD, SS, and the Einsatzkommando 4a, shot twenty-five Polish professors and seventeen members of their families.[978] The Germans obtained the names and addresses of the professors from the OUN-B. Mykola Lebed’ was in charge of this operation.[979]

Because the pogrom in Lviv took place at the same time as the proclamation of the Ukrainian state, the city was full of yellow-and-blue and swastika flags, and posters blaming the Jews for the murder of the prisoners, or celebrating Stepan Bandera and Adolf Hitler with slogans such as “Long Live Stepan Bandera, Long Live Adolf Hitler.” The “Great German Army,” the OUN, and the war against “Jewish communists” were also celebrated on posters, under which fell the bodies of murdered Jews. One of the posters said:

To stop this Jewish-communist brigandage, to help Ukraine liberate itself, Adolf Hitler, the great leader of the German people, has ordered the steel-clad columns of the invincible German army to set off into battle and to destroy the bloody lair of the Jewish-Bolshevik commune once and for all. The German soldiers have come to us as our friends. In our towns and villages Ukrainians are welcoming them as their liberators.[980]

Posters with slogans such as “Ukraine for the Ukrainians” were based on Mikhnovs’kyi’s racist nationalism. They informed their readers as to whom the territory in which they lived should belong, and who should and should not be allowed to live in it.[981] Many of the posters and other revolutionary propaganda materials linked the idea of founding a Ukrainian state with killing the Jews. One such poster “To the Ukrainian Nation! [Ukraїns’kyi Narode!]” read: “Know! Moscow, Hungarians, Jews [Zhydova]—are your enemies, Kill them, do not forget! Your leadership is the leadership of the Ukrainian Nationalists OUN, your leader is Stepan Bandera, your aim is an Independent United Ukrainian State”[982] On 30 June 1941, a group of about ten Jews was forced to print the OUN-B posters and other propaganda material that motivated the crowd to kill the Jews.[983]

Ukrainian nationalists and beautifully dressed Ukrainian patriots, who came to Lviv to welcome the Germans, greeted each other with the official OUN-B salute, calling “Glory to Ukraine!” and responding “Glory to the Heroes!” According to Alfred Monaster, some of them used also the German Nazi salute.[984] Militiamen forced Jews to perform the Ukrainian fascist salute, in order to humiliate them. On 30 June 1941, when J. Berman, a Jewish teacher of German, raised his left instead of his right arm, he was beaten and kicked by a Ukrainian militiaman. Then he had to salute three times with his right arm while calling out “Glory to Ukraine!” Afterwards he was beaten again but was eventually released.[985]

On 2 July 1941, Kurt Lewin decided to go into the streets because he felt that his apartment was not safe. He put on a blue shirt and a yellow tie. This kept the Ukrainian militiamen and Germans at a distance and allowed him to move through the city.[986] A Jewish woman who needed to leave her apartment building stuck to her jacket a small yellow-and-blue ribbon, such as boys were distributing in the streets during the pogrom. This allowed her to go untouched through the city.[987] Szende wrote in his memoirs that he and some other Jews “were protected by the authority of a Greek Catholic priest and the Greek Catholic church in the vicinity.”[988]

OUN-B propaganda presented Bandera as the Providnyk of the OUN. The survivor Lewin wrote in his memoirs in 1946 that on 2 July 1941 “the city was full of yellow-and-blue banners. … In the streets, the proclamations of Stepan Bandera were posted—the leader of the Ukrainians was calling for murder and conflagration.”[989] Jan Rogowski, a teacher at a grammar school in Lviv, also saw the yellow-and-blue flags hanging together with swastika flags on the city hall, and posters with the slogans that appeared in “Struggle and Activities.”[990] In his memoirs, Rogowski wrote that “Bandera was supposed to be the Ukrainian leader [ukraiński Führer] who wanted to style himself on Hitler.”[991] The OUN member Roman Volchuk remembered “proclamations, which ended with ‘Long Live Stepan Bandera and Adolf Hitler,’ posted around the city.”[992]

Szyper noticed that, after German troops came to Lviv, German and Ukrainian flags were hung out everywhere, and the Ukrainians expected that a Ukrainian “state of a fascist kind” would be established. He also heard a speech by the mayor of Lviv, Polians’kyi, in which the speaker expressed loyalty to Hitler.[993] Writing in December 1941, an anonymous witness had noticed the yellow-and-blue flags next to the swastikas, overcrowded Greek Catholic churches, and “everywhere the announcements with the signature of the leader of the Ukrainian Nationalists Bandera: ‘Ukraine for the Ukrainians.’”[994] Yones noticed the slogan “Long live Adolf Hitler and Stepan Bandera. Death to the Jews and communists.”[995] In his memoirs, he described how a Ukrainian militiaman with a yellow-and-blue armlet came to examine his passport when he wandered near the OUN posters. After the militiaman realized that Yones was a Jew, he hit him with his fist so solidly in the face that Yones needed about an hour before he could stand up.[996]

After the proclamation of statehood and at the time of the most violent moments of the pogrom, Stets’ko, leader of the new Ukrainian government, was writing letters in German, the lingua franca of the “New Europe,” to leaders of other European fascist states. He informed the Poglavnik Pavelić that, “as a result of a centuries-long struggle of the Ukrainian people for their sovereignty, the Ukrainian state was proclaimed in Lviv on 30 June 1941.” He stated his firm belief that “both revolutionary nations [Ukrainian and Croatian], hardened in battle, will guarantee the establishment of healthy circumstances in the Europe of the new order.” A similar aspiration for “creative collaboration” between the Spanish and Ukrainian nations was aired in Stets’ko’s letter to the Caudillo. Meanwhile Mussolini was informed that the Ukrainian state had been re-established in the territories “liberated from Muscovite-Jewish occupation ... according to the will of the Ukrainian people that finds its expression in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera.” Stets’ko also sent the Duce his warm greetings, wished a speedy victory to his brave nation, and expressed his conviction that Ukraine would be part of the “new fascist order that must replace the Versailles system.”[997]

In a letter to Hitler, Stets’ko offered his congratulations. “In the name of the Ukrainian people and its government” he expressed the desire that the German leader would “crown the struggle with an eternal triumph.” The premier of the Ukrainian state also wrote that the victories of the German army would allow Hitler to expand the “New Europe” to its eastern parts. “In this way you [Hitler] have allowed the Ukrainian people, as one of the fully entitled and free members of the European family of peoples, in its sovereign Ukrainian state, to play an active part in the grand plan.”[998] Besides these official letters, the self-proclaimed premier planned to send representatives of the OUN-B government to Slovakia, Romania, Japan, Croatia, Germany, and probably other member states of the “New Europe.”[999]

In sending the letters to the leaders of European fascist states, Stets’ko behaved similar to his Croatian counterpart, Kvaternik, who proclaimed the NDH on 10 April 1941. Shortly after the proclamation, Kvaternik sent a letter to Hitler, in which he thanked the Führer “in the name of the Croatian people, for the protection the German army has given the Croat national rebellion, and [to] request your recognition of the Independent State of Croatia by the Greater German Reich.” He finished the letter with “Long live the Führer of the German people!”[1000]

The government that Stets’ko was trying to announce in his letters was called the Ukrainian State Administration (Ukraїns’ke Derzhavne Pravlinnia).[1001] It was not comprised solely of OUN-B members but also some other Ukrainian politicians. Such cooperation with other parties or political camps was quite typical of some of the fascist movements, which needed to consolidate their power. The National Socialists, for example, cooperated with other political blocs, mainly with conservatives and national conservatives before they established their regime and eliminated other political parties. The head of the Ukrainian State Administration was Stets’ko. His deputy was Lev Rebet. Other well-known OUN members in this government were Mykola Lebed’, Roman Shukhevych, Roman Ilnytzkyi, Iaroslav Starukh, Volodymyr Horbovyi, and Ivan Klymiv.[1002] A few days after its formation, the Ukrainian State Administration was banned by the Germans and ceased to function, but it established a Council of Elders (Rada Sen’ioriv) to carry on as a body that would represent the Ukrainians, under the control of the OUN-B. The OUN-B wanted to make Dmytro Dontsov the leader of the Council of Elders, but the position finally went to Kost’ Levyts’kyi and Andrei Sheptyts’kyi. The Ukrainian State Administration and the Council of Elders were to have performed the function of a parliament in the OUN-B state. They expressed a desire to hold their meetings in the impressive building of the University of Lviv, which had been used by the Galician parliament until 1918.[1003] Members of the Council of Elders swore “to be faithful till death, to the great Idea.” The text of the oath finished with “Glory to the Unified Independent Ukraine! Glory to the OUN and its Providnyk Stepan Bandera!”[1004]

From fragments of the minutes of sessions of either the government or the Council of Elders or the State Administration, we know that one of these institutions was discussing how to solve the “Jewish problem” in Ukraine.[1005] The participants in the discussion did not specify exactly how this “annihilation action” was to be conducted. One participant, the writer Oleksa Hai-Holovko, claimed that the ethnic question in Ukraine was to be solved in the “German way.” He meant that the Jews “have to be treated very harshly” and that we “must finish them off” because “Jews are very insolent.” The OUN-B member Lenkavs’kyi stated that “regarding the Jews, we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.” Furthermore, the participants very enthusiastically discussed a kind of Ukrainian Generalplan Ost. All non-Ukrainians living in Ukraine were to be evacuated or annihilated, and all Ukrainians living outside “ethnic Ukrainian territory” were to be resettled in “ethnic Ukrainian territory,” or the territories in which these Ukrainians lived were to be incorporated into the Ukrainian state. For example, all the Ukrainians from Moscow and Leningrad were to be resettled in Ukraine.[1006]

The absence of Bandera, and later of Stets’ko, who was placed under Ehrenhaft (honorable captivity) on 9 July 1941, did not interrupt the “Ukrainian National Revolution,” which had been going on for several weeks.[1007] Probably to improve German-Ukrainian relations, which had deteriorated after the tensions surrounding the proclamation of the state on 30 June, Ukrainians were allowed to organize a second huge pogrom in Lviv. This pogrom started on 25 July and lasted until 28 July. It was called the “Petliura days” and was organized to avenge the acquittal of Schwartzbard by the French court who had killed Petliura on 25 May 1926.[1008]

During the “Petliura days,” as in the first pogrom, the Ukrainian militiamen seized Jews in streets or in their apartments and brought them to the prison on Łąckiego Street and the Gestapo building on Pełczyńska Street. There the Jews were humiliated, beaten, and killed. Peasants from local villages came to Lviv and were seen humiliating, beating, raping, killing, and robbing Jews.[1009] Gerstenfeld noticed that “crowds in the streets” during the Petliura days “were full of numbers of youths in embroidered Ukrainian shirts.”[1010] Wehrmacht soldiers participated “in the most disgusting way” in this pogrom, which outraged their superior, General Karl von Roques.[1011] The number of victims of the “Petliura days” is hard to estimate. Yones estimated it at 1,500.[1012]

Pogroms and Nationalist Celebrations in Other Western Ukrainian Localities

The greatest pogrom in western Ukraine was staged in Lviv, but several thousand Jews were killed in pogroms in many other places. Andrzej Żbikowski identified thirty-five pogroms in western Ukraine; Aharon Weiss, fifty-eight; Jeffrey Kopfstein, 124, and Kai Struve up to 140.[1013] Dieter Pohl estimated that the number of victims of all pogroms ranged between 13,000 and 35,000.[1014] Alexander Kruglov estimated the number of Jewish victims of shootings and pogroms in July 1941 in western Ukraine, at between 38,000 and 39,000.[1015]

Two other major pogroms in eastern Galicia occurred in Ternopil’ and Zolochiv (Złoczów). In both cases Ukrainian militias cooperated with German troops. On 2 July 1941 in Zolochiv, Jews were beaten, murdered, and otherwise mistreated by militiamen and other pogromists, who asked the Germans for permission to take revenge. On 3 July, male Jews were forced by the Ukrainian militia and the German troops to exhume corpses of the NKVD victims from a mass grave in the yard of the castle in Zolochiv. When they had finished, they were shot by the Germans. More and more Jews were then brought to this grave and shot, so that the grave from which the Jews were forced to remove the NKVD victims was filled with bodies of murdered Jews. Altogether, 3,000 Jews were killed in Zolochiv by the Germans and local people, inspired by the OUN-B. As in Lviv, the OUN-B put up posters and distributed leaflets in which it welcomed the Germans as allies and liberators.[1016]

German troops arrived in Ternopil’ on 2 July 1941. The following day, corpses of the NKVD’s victims were found in the prison, and several Jews were beaten, robbed, and generally mistreated. The actual pogrom started on the morning of 4 July and continued until 6 July.[1017] In Ternopil’ the main perpetrators were the Waffen-SS Wiking division together with local OUN-B activists, in particular militiamen, assisted by numerous other pogromists from the town and nearby villages. One survivor of this pogrom mentioned that a Ukrainian woman let her know that, at a meeting on 3 July, Ukrainians demanded permission from the Germans to take revenge on Jews.[1018]

During the pogrom, Ukrainians pointed out Jewish houses to the Germans, from which they seized Jewish men, who were forced to clean cars in the market square, and were then shot in the basements and in the cemetery.[1019] Some Waffen-SS soldiers raped Jewish women.[1020] Others forced Jews to carry out corpses from a courthouse and wash them. Afterwards about 1,000 Jews were killed with cudgels and spades, as a soldier informed his parents in Vienna.[1021] A survivor, Salomon Hirschberg, stressed the role of the Ukrainian militia with the yellow-and-blue armlets, “recruited from the local elements as well as from adjacent villages” and mentioned that Ukrainians also used local radio to propagate violence.[1022] According to the records of a Ukrainian health organization, more than 4,000 Jews were killed in this pogrom.[1023] In the cemetery on 7 July, the Ukrainian militiamen shot a group of Jews without the assistance of the SS.[1024]

As well as in Lviv, Ternopil’ and Zlochiv, smaller pogroms occurred in many other localities. Some of the smaller anti-Jewish massacres seemed to have had a more spontaneous character; others were incited by the OUN-B and the Germans. During these pogroms Jews were killed by peasants or local residents armed with iron bars, sticks, spades, pitchforks, cudgels, scythes, or hammers, and their apartments were afterwards looted, sometimes by their neighbors. In a few places Jews were burned in barns, as in Jedwabne.[1025] In many places in which the pogroms took place, the OUN-B had established militias similar to those in Lviv. These militiamen carried out instructions similar to those suggested in “Struggle and Activities” and did not behave differently from their comrades in Lviv. As in Lviv, in many other Galician and Volhynian locations, the pogroms overlapped with the proclamation of statehood. On 3 July 1941 in Ternopil’, one day before the pogrom, portraits of Bandera, Hitler, and Konovalets’ were exhibited at a meeting where OUN-B members greeted the Germans, celebrated the liberation from “Jewish Bolshevism,” and proclaimed statehood (Fig. 18).[1026]