The Space of Synagogues

Простір Синагог

Lviv (Ukrainian: Lwiw, polnisch: Lwów) was once a flourishing cultural centre in which for centuries Jews had played a major role. In 2016, the »Space of Synagogues« memorial was opened on the site of the Golden Rose Synagogue destroyed during the German occupation of the city in the Second World War.

History

The Jewish community of Lviv was one of the most important in the Kingdom of Poland in the Middle Ages. After the division of Poland in 1772 Lviv belonged to the Habsburg Empire. During this period, the ideas of the Enlightenment had a great influence on the Lviv Jews, while at the same time the Austrian administration tried to bind them to the Austrian state, amongst other things by promoting the German language. In 1867 Jews in Austria-Hungary achieved full legal equality. It was the beginning of a Golden Age for the city and the Lviv Jews. At the same time, the Polish national movement grew stronger - many Jews turned towards Polish culture. After the First World War, Lviv belonged once again to Poland and was one of the most important cultural centres of the country. Poles made up about half of the city population, a third were Jews and about 15 percent Ukrainians.
After the outbreak of the war in September 1939, the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland including Lviv in consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. When the German Wehrmacht attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, it occupied Lviv almost immediately. Incited by the Germans, the rage of parts of the Ukrainian population bottled-up during the Soviet occupation unleashed on the Jews: in a pogrom lasting several days at the end of July 1941, more than 2,000 Jews were murdered.
In the summer of 1941, the Germans destroyed all synagogues, including the 16th century Orthodox Golden Rose Synagogue. They set up a ghetto to which all Jews from Lviv and the surrounding area were relocated. In 1942/43, the SS deported most of Lviv's Jews to the Bełżec and Sobibór extermination camps and murdered them there with poison gas. In June 1943, the Germans dissolved the ghetto murdering 10,000 Jews. The survivors were taken to forced labour camps such as the one on Janowska Street in Lviv.

Lviv, 2013, The site of the former Golden Rose Synagogue before the renovation seen from the opposite street, Christian Herrmann

Lviv, 2018, »The Space of Synagoues, Stiftung Denkmal, Bozhena Kozakevych

Victims

Prior to 1939, about 110,000 Jews lived in Lviv. After the division of Poland in 1939, about 100,000 Jewish refugees from the German-occupied part of the country were added. Almost all of them were murdered between 1941 and 1944 in anti-Jewish riots, mass shootings and in extermination camps, or perished in forced labour camps.

Ukraine, the second-largest Republic in the European part of the former Soviet Union, was at the centre of the Second World War and the Holocaust. It is estimated that five to six million Ukrainians died during the war, including around 630,000 Jews. In mid-September 1939, following the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in accordance with the Hitler-Stalin Pact – a secret German-Soviet agreement –, the south-east of Poland became part of the Soviet Ukraine. The oppression of the local population was now an everyday occurrence. In summer 1941, the German attack on the Soviet Union initially affected these very regions. Right from the start of the invasion the Jewish population was accused of supporting the Soviet powers and became the target of brutal attacks. These attacks were often the work of nationalist Ukrainians, who initially welcomed the advance of the Wehrmacht. German SS Einsatzgruppen and allied Rumanian units soon began to carry out mass shootings of Jews. The Babyn Yar ravine near Kiev, where German units and Ukrainian militia murdered over 33,700 Jews over two days in September 1941, has since become a global symbol of the genocide of Jews. The non-Jewish population was also a target for persecution. National Socialist racist ideology classed Ukrainians, as all »Slavs«, as »subhuman«. The occupiers looted the country, deported way over one million civilians to carry out forced labour and publicly executed hostages. By 1943 a partisan war against the Wehrmacht was raging along with the campaign of the nationalist »Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya« (Ukrainian Rebel Army or UPA) against the Soviets and the Polish population in western Ukraine. The number of Poles to die in the process lies way over 100,000. From 1944 the Ukraine was again part of the Soviet Union and also encompassed former territories in eastern Poland. The UPA continued its campaign until the mid-1950s. The Soviet authorities deported around 300,000 Ukrainians to Siberia to counter the resistance. The Ukrainian culture of memory was aligned with the symbolic forms of remembrance found in the Soviet Union. Monumental sites of memory were constructed to celebrate the »victory« in the Great Patriotic War. It is only recently that victims have been remembered alongside the venerated heroes. In addition, a culture of memory centred on the campaign of the UPA has emerged in western Ukraine, with the UPA’s legacy being interpreted as a struggle for independence. Confrontation with anti-semitism and the collaboration with the German occupiers has only begun around 2000. With just a few exceptions, the mass shootings of Jews were ignored until the 1980s. It was not until 1991 that the government of independent Ukraine acknowledged Babyn Yar as a »symbol of Jewish martyrdom«. Long after gaining independence, Ukraine was still on the search for its national identity. The documentation of Soviet crimes – for example the state’s responsibility for the Great Famine (Holodomor) in 1922-23 that led to millions of deaths – has more significance in the establishment of a Ukrainian identity than learning about the Holocaust. Nevertheless, new memorial sites for the murdered Jews were established throughout the country, such as Drobitskiy Yar in Kharkiv or the Holocaust Museum in Odessa. On many mass grave sites new memorials were created, partially with German support. In Kiev, a new grand memorial site with global relevance was planned at Babyn Yar. These plans were put on hold with the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. What impact the current defensive war will have on Holocaust remembrance in the future remains to be seen.

Remembrance

The Golden Rose Synagogue was built in 1582 in Renaissance style with Gothic windows. Until the construction of the Great City Synagogue in the immediate vicinity in 1801, the Golden Rose served as the main synagogue for the Jewish community of Lviv. In the 19th century mainly Hasidic Jews used the synagogue. 1941 the German occupying forces burned down all synagogues, the ruins were usually blown up and demolished. Only remains of the Golden Rose remained, which were almost completely destroyed in the post-war period. Only the remnants of a wall remained which show the contours of the Gothic windows.
After the independence of Ukraine, Lviv began to take a closer look at its Jewish history. In 1992 a memorial plaque was placed on the remains of the walls of the Golden Rose Synagogue. In 2008, an initiative was launched to make the most important sites of Jewish history that have disappeared since the Second World War visible again in the city's landscape. A major step forward was the redesign of the remains of the Golden Rose Synagogue and the traces of Beth Hamidrash, a Torah school. In the centre of the ensemble are memorial stones with quotes in several languages. The memorial ensemble thus recalls both the once flourishing Jewish community and the destruction of the synagogues and the murdering of the Lviv Jews during the German occupation. The next step is to redesign the square where the Great City Synagogue once stood.

Lviv, about 1900, Historical postcard from the time before the First World War, public domain

Lviv, 2012, Memorial plaque from 1992 at the ruins of the Golden Rose Synagogue, Oleg Yunakov

Open

The memorial plaque is currently not accessible.

Contact

https://www.lvivcenter.org

institute@lvivcenter.org

+380 (0)322 751 734

Staroevreiska 41
7900 Lwiw

Lviv, 2016, »The Space of Synagogues« on the night of the ceremonial opening, Rohatyn Heritage Group, Marla Raucher Osborn

Lviv, 2018, Stelae with quotations, Stiftung Denkmal, Bozhena Kozakevych

Schwalmstadt-Trutzhain

Trutzhain Memorial and Museum

Between 1939 and 1945, located in what is today the township of Trutzhain was a prisoner of war camp, the Stalag IX A Ziegenhain. The Wehrmacht incarcerated POWs from all European countries at war wit...

Stadtallendorf

Documentation and Information Centre Stadtallendorf

Between 1938 and 1945, over 17,000 forced labourers were deployed in the arms industry in what is today Stadtallendorf. The Documentation and Information Centre (DIZ) deals with this time period and c...

Münster

Villa ten Hompel Memorial Site

Between 1940 and 1944, the headquarters of the Ordnungspolizei (order police) for the military district VI were located in the former villa of industrialist Rudolf ten Hompel. The Ordnungspolizei was...