Hanging of the Lwów Ghetto Judenrat. Bełżec extermination camp and the Janowska concentration camp. World War II, with a population of lemberg,231. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-N0827-318, KZ Auschwitz, Ankunft ungarischer Juden.

Lviv was occupied by the German Wehrmacht in the early hours of 30 June 1941. That day, Jews were press-ganged by the Germans to remove bodies of the NKVD’s victims from the three local jails. A second pogrom took place in the last days of July 1941 and was named the “Petlura Days” after the assassinated Ukrainian leader and pogromist Symon Petliura. The Germans established a Jewish police force called the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst Lemberg wearing dark blue Polish police uniforms from before World War II, but with the Polish insignia replaced by a Magen David and the new letters J.

Their ranks numbered from 500 to 750 policemen. The Lemberg Ghetto was one of the first to have Jews transported to the death camps as part of Aktion Reinhard. Between 10 and 31 August 1942, the “Great Aktion” was carried out, where between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were rounded up, gathered at transit point placed in Janowska camp and then deported to Belzec. Many who were not deported, including local orphans and hospital inpatients, were shot.

Between 5 and 7 January 1943, another 15,000-20,000 Jews, including the last members of the Judenrat, were shot outside of the town on the orders of Fritz Katzmann. At the beginning of June 1943 Germans decided to end the existence of the Jewish quarter and its inhabitants. As Nazis entered the Ghetto they met some sporadic acts of armed resistance, facing grenades and Molotov cocktails. The Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators lost 9 killed and 20 wounded. By the time that the Soviet Red Army entered Lwów on 26 July 1944, only a few hundred Jews remained in the city. Among its notable inhabitants was Chaim Widawski, who disseminated news about the war picked up with an illegal radio. Polish Olympic football player Leon Sperling was shot to death by the Nazis in the ghetto in December 1941.