You're reading: Lost Lviv: An exhibit

LVIV, Ukraine – From his exile in New York, the famed Polish writer Jozef Wittlin (1896-1976) remembered the many faces of 20th century Lviv, the city where he grew up:

“I close my eyes and hear how the Lviv bells ring, and each one rings differently. I hear the splashing of the fountain on the Market Square under the rustle of blowing trees, from which the dust was washed away by the spring rain. Ten o’clock approaches and it becomes so quiet that I hear the hurried steps of passers-by, those who are walking in order to get home before the beginning of the night hour. The heelpieces of these shadows knock along the wiped-down plates of the sidewalks…The dead walk with the living. The dead stop the living and ask for a flame to light a cigarette. Ladies’ men badger dames in the bustle, dames who for a long time have already been shadows. A promenade of shadows. Making friends in death, enemies take each other under the arms like friends. They stop at the corner where, in smoky stoves, chestnuts are baked.”

By the time he penned these words in 1946 in his classic essay, Moj Lwow, the tenor of the city Wittlin loved so much was forever gone: Its centuries-old Jewish community had been annihilated in the Holocaust; Poles, who for many decades had breathed into the city so much of its culture and character, were deported west to a motherland now Socialist; Russians, whose presence in Lviv had less significantly been felt before World War I, settled, en masse, into buildings vacated by those who left. Ukrainians, who had always been part of the city but often at its political periphery, were now the dominant ethnic group. Yet with so many of their liberal, Western-oriented leaders gone, they struggled to create a new identity in what had become a new land, a new environment.

By 1946, Lviv, a city so often called “Little Vienna,” had become the most important western outpost of the vast Soviet empire.

While much has been written about the important years of 1941-1944 during World War II, less known is 1939-1941, a time historians refer to as the first period of the war. Under-researched and still enigmatic, that period, however, is critical to understanding the full effects of the alliance that occurred between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. As part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the two divided northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence in a secret protocol.

So that 1939-1941 doesn’t remain the shadows, a group of Ukrainian and Polish historians recently set before themselves the task of remembering that period and bringing it to public focus. The results of their joint efforts have been on display here in an open air photo exhibition held near one of the fountains on Lviv’s Market Square that Wittlin wrote about.

Titled “Lviv 1939-1941” the exhibit, a joint project between Ukraine’s and Poland’s institutes of national memory, focuses on Soviet occupation of the city.

It consists of explanatory text in Ukrainian and Polish, a plethora of quotes from eyewitnesses, reprints of old photographs and archival documents, as well as numerous graphics. Among the issues it focuses on, the exhibit highlights the reaction of the city’s three dominant ethnic groups – Jews, Poles and Ukrainians – to the occupation and discusses the various tactics the Soviets used to solidify their control over the populace.

This included holding hastily-organized elections where Communists took charge; changing the educational system by liquidating traditional gymnasiums and introducing a Soviet-style system of 10 grades, as well as changing the language of instruction from Polish or Yiddish into Ukrainian; and banning religious education completely.

The exhibit discusses daily life; how the region’s Ukrainians reacted to the so-called “Golden September” when Ukrainian lands that had long been separated were merged into one nation; and how the city dealt with its many refugees.

It also looks at opposition to the regime; provides numbers for how many people were deported, primarily to Siberia; and the number of individuals killed by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, by the end of Soviet rule in June 1941.

“Our exhibit is one more attempt to remind us of the European dimension of Ukrainian history, because according to this dimension, the Second World War began in Ukraine not in 1941, but in 1939,” said Yaroslav Hrytsak, a leading Ukrainian historian who is one of the show’s authors.

“Perhaps 1939 had less influence on Tula or Vladivostok (both in Russia), although I have no doubt that a good historian succeeded in showing how the beginning of the war influenced the deep regions of Russia. Lviv, however, found itself at the very center of these events.”
From 1939-1941, Lviv lost 80 percent of its native population, historians said.

The aggregate number of victims among the peaceful population who inhabited the Soviet-occupied territory of western Ukraine and western Belarus was three to four times higher than in the part of Poland occupied by Germany, even though that territory was twice as small.

Leonid Zashkilniak, a historian with Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences, said many of the materials examined were eye-opening even for the historians.

“The views of Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and Armenians on the events of those years of course will differ, but there is one moment where these views unite, behind which everyone can come together, not only to understanding, but to mutual perception” and that is what the Soviet regime brought those nations, he said. “The inhabitants of Lviv and Halychyna didn’t accept this regime. They battled against it.”

Hrytsak noted the situation was so bad, a new genre of prayer originated about war.

“The Halychyna-Jewish variant of the prayer sounded like this: Either that (Stalin) leaves himself, or that other (Hitler) doesn’t come here at all or that Polish authority doesn’t return in order for all of us to stay here.”

Jacek Kluczkowski, Poland’s ambassador to Ukraine, said the work being done by Ukrainian and Polish historians was an important step forward in bringing understanding between the two nations.

“This period of time was a common tragedy for Ukrainians and Poles. The Stalinist terror…was a terrible experience for these nations.”

A conference at the opening of the exhibit, however, shows the sensitivity official Moscow still feels over the period.

“You say that there was a repressive Soviet regime,” Russian consul Yevgeniy Guzeev told the audience. “Yes, I blame Stalin, he was a criminal dictator. This is a person who made a large contribution to destroy the basis of civilization, but the USA, Great Britain, Germany and France weren’t better. The Germans destroyed 6.5 million Poles. You don’t speak about that because Poland is in the EU….We in Moscow, Moscovites, always considered Lviv Ukrainian land.”

Nadia Diuk, a vice president at the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington-based nonprofit that strengthens democratic institutions globally, said it was important that Ukrainians and Poles, who have often been at odds over the region’s history, worked together to focus on the effects of the period’s Soviet occupation on its three most important ethnic groups.

“The history of these two years radically changed the lives of so many people,” said Diuk, who has co-authored two books on the former Soviet Union and taught at Oxford University. “Without looking at the past, you can’t move forward to a better future.”

Historians involved in the project said they hope that it will be shown in other cities in Ukraine and Poland.


What: Photo exhibition “Lviv 1939-1941,” a joint project between the institutes of national memory in Ukraine and Poland.
Where: Lviv’s Market Square
When: This month.
Why: To capture life in Lviv during Soviet occupation after the 1939 signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact, which gave control of the area to the Soviet Union

Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak can be reached at [email protected].