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Ghetto in Lviv

The Lviv ghetto was the largest in the occupied territory of the USSR and the third largest in Europe after Warsaw and Lodz. During the occupation, it contained approximately 138.7 thousand Jews.

By 1939, about 110 thousand Jews lived in Lviv. By 1941, according to historians, about 100 thousand Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Polish lands arrived in the city.

About 10 thousand Jews were among Polish citizens deported to Siberia by the Soviet government.

Lviv was one of the first cities occupied by the Nazis at the beginning of the war. It was occupied on June 30, 1941. Therefore, the Jewish population did not have time to evacuate.

In July 1941, the Nazis, with the participation of local residents, organized two Jewish pogroms, during which about 6 thousand people died. In early August 1941, the Nazis took 1,000 hostages, obliging the community to pay 20 million rubles in 10 days. After paying the amount, the hostages did not return home.

The order for the resettlement of Jews in the ghetto was issued on November 8, 1941. It provided that the Jews would resettle in the allotted area before December 15, and the non-Jewish population would leave the territory allocated for the ghetto.

Geographically, the ghetto from the north was limited by the banks of the Poltva River. In the west, the border passed along Varshavskaya Street, and in the east along Zamarstynovskaya Street.

The Judenrat, that controlled the ghetto, consisted of 23 departments that were responsible for the distribution of housing, social assistance, supplies, etc. In the ghetto was created a "Jewish police" of 500 people.

Occupants divided the ghetto population into two parts: artisans, doctors, scientists, skilled workers and Judenrat employees got into the privileged one. They lived in a separate section of the ghetto and enjoyed the right to go beyond it.

The occupiers periodically took hostages of the remaining prisoners and sent them to concentration camps. Before settling in the ghetto, the Nazis conducted a “selection”, killing about 5 thousand people who seemed to them useless.

Since the end of 1941, the Nazis regularly sent ghetto prisoners to concentration camps. In March and August 1942, 65 thousand Jews were sent to Belzec. About 7 thousand prisoners of the ghetto in the summer of 1942 ended up in the Yanivsky camp. Since January 1943, the Lviv ghetto began to function as a camp.

According to researchers, 10 to 20% of prisoners in the ghetto died from hunger, epidemics, and suicide.

In June 1943, the Nazis set about liquidating the ghetto. The prisoners put up armed resistance. During the operation, 3 thousand Jews died, about 7 thousand more got into the Yanivsky camp.

In July 1944, the Soviet army occupied Lviv. There left three hundred Jews.

In modern Lviv, the Territory of Terror museum operates, part of its exposition is dedicated to the history of the ghetto.