Lemberg - Lwow - L'viv: Sites of persecution

The center of the city suffered little damage in July 1944 when Red Army forces invested, then occupied L'viv and captured what remained of its defenders. Today, most of the urban landscape that witnessed the ghettoization and eventual murder of at least 125,000 Jews between November 1941 and November 1943 is similar to its disposition sixty-five years ago. These images may be cross referenced to a contemporary German map of Lemberg (2.1944) that will appear in this blog in the near future.

The first photo, above, is the Sobieski School, located at 11 Zamarstynivka [Zamarstinowka] Street, just south of the railway embankment that separated the Jewish ghetto from the "Aryan" section of the city. Across from Sobieski is the Zamarstyniv underpass (from where I took this photo), which connected the northern and southern halves of the city. The underpass bisects the railway embankment about 250 meters east of the former main ghetto entrance, the underpass on Peltevna Street (second photo). Nazi authorities first used Sobieski as a transit site during the ghetto reduction action in March 1942. All seized Jews were destined for either the Janowska forced labor camp (Zwangsarbeitslager), or across Janowska Street [Weststrasse] from it, the Livandivka [Livandowka] embarkation platforms for trains to the killing centers in neighboring Lublin District. Those Jews were first deposited at the school where German authorities re-checked their identities and papers in its crowded class rooms. Ukrainian and German police then escorted the Jews to the city's northwest limit along Janowska Street.

The so-called bridge of death (as Jewish memoirists referred to it), in the second image, was where the German security and civil administrators established the only passageway into the Jewish residential district (later, ghetto, then Judenlager - Jewish camp). It is the underpass on Peltevna [Peltwena] Street. Today, it is the site of a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazi occupation; the memorials visible in the foreground are situated within the former ghetto area just north of the embankment. This perspective show clearly the railroad bridge and embankment that defined the southern edge of the Jewish quarter. When the German civil administrator (Stadthauptmann) ordered the residential district established in 15 November 1941, security personnel funneled all Jews passing into the area through this underpass. Elderly and ill Jews were separated from the rest and killed nearby; others were searched and their valuables seized if those were not sufficiently well concealed. When security authorities converted the Jewish quarter into a fenced ghetto after the murder of the Judenrat in early September 1943, a gate sealed off this official point of entry into the area.

The March 1942 Aktion: the first phase

German authorities assumed control of the 500 man Jewish Ordnungsdienst (police force) for the operation. The force was to assemble, screen, and transport a quota of 1,000 Jews a day, in close coordination with the unsuspecting Judenrat.(1) Beginning on 14 March, Jewish policemen gathered Jews on the basis of their documentation, the names on rolls kept of Jewish community welfare organization, or (in some instances) in settlement of personal scores. Each Jew's documents were first checked and the Ordnungsdienst delivered those lacking appropriate documentation to a school just beyond the Jewish residential district's boundary, the Sobieski School. The deportees filled the schoolrooms and police commissioner Dr. Ullrich rechecked the papers of the day's catch the same afternoon. Trains arrived each morning at a loading platform in the northwest part of the city (the Klepariv siding), directly opposite the Janowska forced labor camp. The selected Jews were moved to Klepariv, loaded aboard freight trains, and dispatched to their final destination.

Early in the operation, the Judenrat had an interest in securing the release of about 120 Jews, mainly specialists and other prominent members of the Jewish community. During the operation's first few days, Dr. Ullrich entertained requests for individual releases. By the third day of the deportation, about 17 March, the Sobieski School remained almost empty and the resettlement train departed Klepariv, not loaded with its quota of 1,000 Jews, but almost empty. Jewish witnesses reported after the war that Dr. Ullrich appeared unusually tense during that day's operation. On the fourth day, Dr. Ullrich did not appear at Sobieski to check papers and dispatch those selected.

SS-Untersturmführer Inquart arrived instead that afternoon (ca. 18 March) and immediately selected almost every Jew in the school for "resettlement," without concern for the status of their papers or appeals for exemptions. Inquart was the Jewish Referent on SSPF Katzmann's staff, and Katzmann's adjutant. The the civil administration police commissioner no longer oversaw the operation. Other SS men accompanying Inquart roamed Sobieski and beat the Jews awaiting transportation. SS men also oversaw the transfer of the Jews from the school to Klepariv (by truck, horse carts, or tram), and the loading of the Jews onto the trains that departed in the direction of District Lublin, to the northwest. The additional violence at Sobieski did not contribute to the attainment of the daily quota; Jews at risk rapidly disappeared into hiding, or acquired the documents necessary to avoid seizure by Jewish police.(2)

On about 20 March, SSPF Katzmann called a meeting with Inquart and a few leaders of the Judenrat. Dr. Landesberg (the Judenrat chairman) and the head of the Jewish police told Katzmann that their men were exhausted, and that there simply were no more undocumented or indigent Jews to be found. Dr. Ullrich, also in attendance, confirmed the difficulties reported. However, Katzmann was not sympathetic. He replied, Wenn ich mit meinem Kommando einsteige, dann werden nicht dreizig-, sondern hundert-tausand ausgesiedelt ["When I get involved with my detachment, not 30,000 but 100,000 will be resettled"].(3) For a couple more days after the meeting the round-ups continued haphazardly. Informers in the civil population reported the locations of Jews in hiding, information that made its way to the German security police.(4) Yet the results must have continued to disappoint Katzmann and Inquart, for no later than 24 March 1942, the SS and Police Leader unleashed his "detachment" against the city's Jews.
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(1) Statement of Dr. Ludwig Jaffe, 11.4.67, New York, Landesgericht Stuttgart Ks 5/65 [Röder et al.], 10060-10083, cited in Pohl, Judenverfolgung, 187. Jaffe is the principal source for the unfolding of the March Aktion in Lemberg that follows.

(2) DALO, R-12 / 1 / 41 / 10, Report (5th Comm.) on sweeps for Jews, 20.3.42. Jews were fleeing the residential district by way of Zamarstynivs'ka and Zhovkivs'ka streets to the Kryvchytsya and Zhovkva districts then leaving the area by car, according do the 5th Commissariat.

(3) Jaffe statement, op. cit. Jaffe participated in the meeting as a Judenrat member.

(4) DALO, R-12 / 1 / 41 / 10, Report (5th Comm.) on sweeps for Jews, 20.3.42. On 19 March, Ukrainian Police headquarters ordered (as Order No. 21) commissariats to report incidents of Jews in hiding that they had received since the start of the month. The 5th Commissariat responded the next day with four incidents involving more than six Jews within the precinct.
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