On Friday, November 22, 1918, Lieutenant Abraham and Warrant Officer Mazanowski hung the Polish flag on the tower of the Lviv City Hall. A few hours earlier, Ukrainian soldiers had withdrawn from the city. There was a crowd in the Market Square - the victory was celebrated, but they were also waiting for a slogan to start ... the robbery and murder of the Jewish inhabitants of the city.
As the darkness receded, a crowd of civilians of all social classes, soldiers, policemen, and officials moved into the center. They had in their heads the desire for revenge for the imaginary wrongs suffered at the hands of the Jews and the alleged cooperation with the Ukrainians and above all - the hatred infused for years by the National Democratic Party, the national press and the Catholic Church. And deep down the greed fueled by stories about Jewish wealth.
About 100 meters from the town hall, at the bottom of the tenement house, there was a rich Zipper jewelery shop. Abraham's soldiers smashed the shutters with grenades, broke inside and began to rob. The excited crowd was just waiting for that.
People started walking along ul. Krakowska from the Market Square. The army smashed shutters and gates with grants, soldiers fired at people visible in the windows. They were all robbing. The first dead bodies were already lying in the streets…
The commandant is watching but not seeing
At 9.00 in the morning, Maciej Rataj, later Speaker of the Sejm, saw Capt. Mączyński, city commander, National Democratic Party. Mączyński did not react when the pogrom spread over the next streets or when the synagogue burned down. Representatives of Jewish communities tried to intervene with him, but he did not accept them. He also ignored the orders of the military commanders.
Beit Chasidim Synagogue, burnt during the pogrom.
The violence escalated. The "Avengers" went to the town hall to collect the vice-president of the city - a Jew. Only the presence of the mind of four left-wing activists saved this distinguished patriot. The military command was helpless, although some tried to save the situation , like Capt. Ludwik de Laveaux, commander of the Polish Military Organization in Lviv. There was little he could do though - the crowd was numerous and aggressive.
It is not proper for a party lady to rob herself
The very laconic but shocking testimonies of the victims have been preserved in the Lviv archives. Grzegorz Gauden, author of the book “Lwów. The End of Illusions. "
They wanted money and gold. The officer shot Altman and the soldier shot my father.
Sonntag was hidden by a Polish servant, heard only shot after shot, murdering her family, and the screams of a nurse encouraging the murders . 14-year-old sister Sally asked the attackers for mercy, they killed her with a shot in the mouth.
At home, they attacked, beaten, threatened with shots, revolvers, and smashed the wife's head and cut off her daughter's fingers , have maliciously destroyed home appliances.
The graves of the pogrom victims at the New Jewish Cemetery in Lviv
It was a manifestation of exceptional bestiality when shooting people jumping out of the windows of burning tenement houses.
All social groups participated in the robberies - elegant women, even during the pogrom, could not appear alone on the street, so they were accompanied by men or servants. It was also unthinkable that the ladies of the society would carry the looted things on their own, which the gentlemen gave them kindly and gracefully ...
It was not until the second day in the afternoon that the army began to intervene and the first arrests of the pogrom participants were made. This did not calm the moods - the killings, robberies and rapes lasted until late at night. In the evening, Mączyński finally succumbed to pressure from some politicians and military men and printed a notice about summary courts for the perpetrators of the crimes. They were hung on Sunday morning. The threat worked - the pogrom ended around 8 o'clock.
Pogrom? What pogrom?
The news about the Lviv pogrom quickly made its way to the Western press. There was a fear that the articles about the bestiality of the participants in those events would harm Polish interests, especially at the peace conference in Paris. Polish diplomacy was afraid that the Entente would withdraw its support for the aspirations of the Republic of Poland.
The authorities in Warsaw, distrusting Lviv, considered it urgent to verify the reports of foreign journalists. Four weeks after the pogrom, the first report by Dr. Leon Chrzanowski and editor Józef Wasserzug, confirming the scale of the destruction and robberies, as well as participation in the pogrom of Polish military and civilians. The number of victims was estimated at 150 (Western media counted them in thousands).
Great Suburban Synagogue burned down during the pogrom
The authors of the report also looked at the activities of the Jewish militia, whose alleged support for the Ukrainians was to provoke the anger of the Poles. This formation was created during the fights for Lviv in order to protect Jewish residents from robberies. It acted with the consent of the Polish and Ukrainian sides, but remained neutral, which was confirmed by numerous reports and the post-war trial of several militiamen.
For internal use, however, a legend was built to justify the pogrom. There were opinions that Jews behaved disloyal to Poles and deserved what happened to them. It was said that it was not Poles who killed but some deserters, marauders, bandits, and even that Jews were killing Jews. The most effective, however, turned out to be a conspiracy of silence. Meanwhile, the persecution of Jews, abuse and desecration of cemeteries continued long after the pogrom.
Today it is believed that 76 people died in the Lviv pogrom. During the first two days, as many as 2,900 participants of those events were arrested, but only 79 of them, including 46 women and only 3 military, were prosecuted, although the evidence - gunshot wounds and bayonet wounds to the victims - pointed to soldiers as the perpetrators of the murders. Two 11-year-old boys were indicted for this.
The events in Lviv were the greatest Polish pogrom at that time, but not the only one. The wave of violence went from Kielce, Częstochowa and other cities to the east along with the Polish army. Dozens of people were killed in Vilnius, Minsk Byelorussia and other cities of the so-called Kresów.
Bibliography
- Grzegorz Gauden:"Lviv. The end of illusions. A Tale of the November 1918 Pogrom ”, Universitas Publishing House.
- Michał Klimecki:"Polish-Ukrainian War", publ. Bellona.