In July 1941, 25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów (nowLviv,Ukraine) along with 25 of their family members were killed byNazi German occupation forces andUkrainian auxiliaries.[1][2] By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis hoped to prevent anti-Nazi activity and to weaken the resolve of thePolish resistance movement. According to an eyewitness the executions were carried out by anEinsatzgruppe unit (German:Einsatzkommando zur besonderen Verwendung) under the command ofKarl Eberhard Schöngarth with the participation of Ukrainian translators in German uniforms.[3]
Before September 1939 and theGerman invasion of Poland, Lwów, then in theSecond Polish Republic, had 318,000 inhabitants of different ethnic groups and religions, 60% of whom were Poles, 30% Jews and about 10% Ukrainians and Germans.[4] The city was one of the most important cultural centers ofinterwar Poland, housing five tertiary educational facilities, includingLwów University andLwów Polytechnic. It was the home for many Polish and Polish Jewish intellectuals, political and cultural activists, scientists and members of Poland's interwarintelligentsia.[1]
After Lwów was occupied by the Soviet Union in September 1939, Lwów University was renamed in honor ofIvan Franko, a major Ukrainian literary figure who lived in Lwów, and the language of instruction was changed from Polish to Ukrainian.[5] Lwów was captured by German forces on 30 June 1941 after theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union. Along with GermanWehrmacht units, a number ofAbwehr andSS formations entered the city. During theGerman occupation of Poland, almost all of the 120,000 Jewish inhabitants of the city were killed, within thecity's ghetto or inBełżec extermination camp. By the end of the war, only 200–800 Jews survived.[1]
To control the population, prominent citizens and intellectuals, particularly Jews and Poles, were either confined in ghettos or transported to execution sites such as theGestapo prison on Pełczyńska Street, theBrygidki Prison, the former military prison atZamarstynów and to the fields surrounding the city — in the suburb of Winniki, the Kortumówka hills and the Jewish Cemetery. Many of those killed were prominent leaders of Polish society: politicians, artists, aristocrats, sportsmen, scientists, priests, rabbis and other members of the intelligentsia. This mass murder is regarded as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent Poles from revolting against Nazi rule. It was a direct continuation of the infamousGerman AB-Aktion in Poland, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the eastern half of prewar Poland fell under German occupation in place of that of the USSR. One of the earliestNazi crimes in Lwów was the mass murder of Polish professors together with some of their relatives and guests, carried out at the beginning of July 1941.[1]
By 2 July 1941, the individual, planned executions continued. At approximately 3 o'clock in the afternoon, ProfessorKazimierz Bartel was arrested by one of theEinsatzgruppen operating in the area. During the night of 3/4 July, several dozen professors and their families were arrested by German detachments – each one consisting of an officer, several soldiers, Ukrainian guides and interpreters.[6] The lists were prepared by their Ukrainian students associated withOUN.[7][8] Some of the professors mentioned on the lists were already dead, specifically Adam Bednarski and Roman Leszczyński.[6] Among those arrested wasRoman Rencki, a director of the Clinic for Internal Diseases at Lwów University, who was kept in an NKVD prison and whose name was also on the list of Soviet prisoners sentenced to death.[9][10]The detainees were transported to the Abrahamowicz's dormitory, where despite the initial intention to kill them, they were tortured and interrogated. The head of the department in the Jewish hospital,Adam Ruff, was shot during anepileptic attack.[6]
In the early morning of 4 July, one of the professors and most of his servants were set free while the rest were either brought to the Wulka hills or shot to death in the courtyard of theBursa Abrahamowiczów building. The victims were buried on the spot, but several days after themassacre their bodies were exhumed and transported by the Wehrmacht to an unknown place.[1][11] There are accounts of four different methods used by the German troops. The victims were either beaten to death, killed with abayonet, killed with a hammer, or shot to death. The professors themselves were shot to death.[12]
The decision was made at the highest level of Nazi Germany's leadership.[13] The direct decision maker of the massacre was the commander of theSicherheitspolizei (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD- BdS) in Krakau District of theGeneral Government,Karl Eberhard Schöngarth. The following Gestapo officers also participated:Walter Kutschmann,Felix Landau, Heinz Heim (Chief of Staff Schöngarth),Hans Krueger and Kurt Stawizki. None of them were ever punished for their roles in the Lwów massacre, although Schöngarth, Landau, and Krueger were punished for other crimes, with Schöngarth being executed in 1946.[14] Kutschmann lived under a false identity inArgentina until January 1975, when he was found and exposed by journalist Alfredo Serra in the resort town ofMiramar. He was arrested ten years later inFlorida, Buenos Aires, byInterpol agents but died of a heart attack in jail before he could be extradited to thenWest Germany, on 30 August 1986.[15]
Some sources contend that members of the Ukrainian auxiliaries from theNachtigall Battalion were responsible for the murders.[16] According to theCanadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, this claim originated with the Soviet sources and has been disputed.[17][18]Memorial has published documents which claim to document the Nachtigall participation in those events as aKGB disinformation.[19] Stanisław Bogaczewicz, of the PolishInstitute of National Remembrance said that Nachtigall soldiers took part in the arrests, but not in the murders, and that their role in this event needs further investigation.[20] SociologistTadeusz Piotrowski noted that while the Nachtigall role is disputed, they were present in the town during the events, their activities are not properly documented, and that at the very least they are guilty of the passive collaboration in this event, for not opposing the atrocities.[16] According to a Lviv historian, Vasyl Rasevych, the claims that Ukrainians participated in the July 1941 massacre are untrue and that no archival evidence exists to support this contention.[21]
After World War II the leadership of theSoviet Union made attempts to diminish the Polish cultural and historic legacy of Lwów. Crimes committed east of theCurzon line could not be prosecuted by Polish courts. Information on the atrocities that took place in Lwów was restricted. In 1960, Helena Krukowska, the widow of Włodzimierz Krukowski, launched an appeal to a court inHamburg. After five years theWest German court closed the judicial proceedings. A West Germanpublic prosecutor claimed the people responsible for the crime were already dead; however,Hans Krueger, commander of the Gestapo unit supervising the massacres in Lwów in 1941, was being held in a Hamburg prison, having been sentenced to life imprisonment for the mass murder of Polish Jews of theStanisławów Ghetto committed several weeks after his unit was transferred from Lwów. As a result, nobody has ever been held responsible for the killings of the academics.[14]
In the 1970s, Abrahamowicz Street in Lviv was renamedTadeusz Boy-Żeleński Street. Various Polish organisations have made deputations to remember the victims of the atrocity with a monument or a symbolic grave in Lviv. The case of the murder of the professors is currently under investigation by theInstitute of National Remembrance. In May 2009, the monument to the victims in Lviv was defaced with red paint bearing the words "Death to the Lachs [Poles]".[22] On 3 July 2011, a memorial dedicated to the Polish professors murdered by the Gestapo on 4 July 1941 opened in Lviv.[21]
Abbreviations used:
Source:[1]
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49°49′43″N24°00′49″E / 49.8285°N 24.0135°E /49.8285; 24.0135
