The new Jewish cemetery in Lviv (Lviv) witnesses the decline and decline of Jewish life in the city

This city, which receives a thousand names after several changes of hands between various countries and empires, had a large Jewish community before the WWII.

She suffered first-hand the Nazi persecution and then the endless communist dictatorship. Both regimes were viciously determined to destroy it forever.

by Ricardo Angoso

We have news that there were up to three Jewish cemeteries in Lviv (Lviv), but, apparently, the oldest of them was destroyed during the Nazi occupation and completed its total destruction during the Soviet era.

We have visited the New Jewish Cemetery, also partly destroyed, as can be seen by observing many of its tombstones shattered and abandoned, and although it is still active, it is in a deplorable state and apparently without anyone paying minimal care to it. its conservation and cleaning, both of the enclosure and its tombs - some of great artistic value.

On one of the web pages that we have found from the Jewish community of Lviv We have been able to read about this place a detailed note about the origin of the place: “The new Jewish cemetery was inaugurated on August 24, 1855, two days after the closure of the old one. It was located in the Pylykhivski Hills, behind Mount Kortumova and near Yanivska Street (now Shevchenka).

The New Cemetery Synagogue was built there at the expense of the Jewish merchant Ephraim Wiksel in 1856. Later, in 1875, the Jewish community paved Pylykhivska Street (Pilichowska, now Yeroshenka), which led to the cemetery from Yanivska Street.

On November 25, 1890, the Jewish community purchased additional land for the new cemetery from Count Stanis ław Skarbek.

That same year, the architect Alfred Kamienobrodzki drew up the project of a neo-Romanesque stone fence that surrounded the cemetery from the Yeroshenka Street side.

The fence was built later; a fragment has remained intact until now. An administrative building was also built according to the project of architect Solomon Kroch to the left of the main entrance to the cemetery.”

Source cited and consulted:
https://lia.lvivcenter.org/en/objects/new-jewish-cemetery/

In those years, somewhat before the founding of this great Jewish cemetery, the Hebrew part of the city was governed by a council of seven members. In 1792 a total of 11.765 Jews lived in the city; in 1800 there were 13.302.

After the death of Joseph II in 1790, Jews were subjected to new restrictions on trade and the purchase of property, but this did not prevent the Jewish community from continuing to grow.

According to the occupational census of 1820, there were 17.931 Jews in Lviv or Lemberg in German, representing 38 percent of the total population.

About half were engaged in commerce and included owners of restaurants, cafes, and inns; Jews also owned distilleries and breweries.

Transit trade between Vienna and Russia was concentrated in the hands of Jews, who frequently participated in the Brody and Leipzig fairs and supplied fashionable goods to the Polish nobility. Another 25 percent of the Jewish population worked in crafts, although in reality most Jews lived in poverty.

Source cited and consulted:
https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Lviv

Parallel to the technological development and the improvement in living conditions because the city belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jewish life developed, as the Jewish encyclopedia Yiyo tells us: “The railway encouraged migration to the city; However, many of the poorer Jews emigrated west. In 1869 there were 26.694 Jews in Lemberg; in 1880 there were 31.000; and in 1900 the population reached 44.258.

The number of Jewish students at the university also grew: in 1881-1886, there were 251 registered Jewish students, and in 1901-1906 the total reached 561. There was also continued growth in the number of Jewish lawyers and doctors.”

According to the account in the Yiyo encyclopedia: “In the summer of 1914, the Russian army conquered the city. Some 16.000 Jews fled and the remaining population included a significant number of refugees from elsewhere.

Russian soldiers attacked Jews and looted stores, and Jews were also summarily executed on trumped-up charges. In May 1915, the Russians withdrew and the Austrians returned. After the liberation, a Jewish aid committee was organized and the community gradually began to function again.” 

The period of splendor of the city was after the First World War, despite some persecutions and massacres perpetrated especially by Poles. During this period three Jewish secondary schools and, in 1920, an institute of Jewish higher education were founded.

There was also a modern Orthodox school, a vocational school, and more traditional Orthodox schools for boys and girls, as well as many yeshivas and synagogues, including Hasidic houses of prayer.

The community had a lively cultural life, including its own theater and regular musical concerts. Many Jewish newspapers were published in the city, including the daily Togblat (Yiddish) and Moment (Polish).

Among the prominent figures during this period were the Zionist members of the Sejm (Political Assembly) Leon Reich and Henrik Rosmarin, the jurist Maurycy Allerhand, and the German philologist Hermann Sternbach.

Source cited and consulted:
https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Lviv).

Returning to the place at hand, in 1912 the construction of the Beth Tahara mortuary chapel of the cemetery began, in the Art Nouveau style, designed by the architects Roman Feliński and Jerzy Grodyński. The construction work was carried out by the famous architect Michal Ulam.

In the years leading up to World War II, the Jewish community expanded its cemetery on May 4, 1930; the new fields were solemnly consecrated by a rabbi. In 1931-1932 the cemetery had an area of ​​25 hectares.

The main street passed through the central part of the cemetery, with dense rows of graves on both sides. On August 9, 1934, the architect Norbert Glattstein drew up the project for a fence around this cemetery.

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION AND THE HOLOCAUST

Thus we arrive at the Second World War, in which the decline and persecution of the Jews derived from the German occupation begins, precisely at the moment when the city has the largest population of Jews.

In September 1939, Lviv became part of Soviet Ukraine and in 1941 the Germans conquered it. The Jewish population was 33% of the Lviv census. There were then about 150.000 Jews in the city, including many refugees from western Poland.

Ukrainians, hoping for independence, welcomed the German occupation and engaged in attacks and massacres against the Jewish community, murdering some 2.000 Jews in several pogroms organized with the consent of the German occupiers. 

During the German occupation all the buildings and tombs in the cemetery were destroyed. In particular, in the spring of 1943 the Nazis blew up the house before the burial (Beth Tahara). In Soviet times, the Pylykhivski Hills Cemetery was run by the Jewish community of Lviv. was also destroyed.

In the early post-war years, at the community's expense, an obelisk was erected in the mass grave near the entrance to today's Yeroshenka Street, where the remains of the Jews executed in 1942-1943 and those of the ancient burial sites destroyed.

Source cited and consulted:
https://lia.lvivcenter.org/en/objects/new-jewish-cemetery/

The German military machine worked hard to destroy the Jewish community of Lviv. In August 1941, eastern Galicia became part of the central government of Poland and all restrictions then in force were applied to it. 

Establishment labor camps in the city and its surroundings, and many Jews died or were murdered. In 1942 the city ghetto was created and they began the actions and deportations to the Bełżec extermination camp and the Janowska forced labor camp (also an extermination camp).

According to the diary of a synagogue rabbi, David Kahane, the Greek Catholic archbishop of Lviv, Andrei Sheptyts'kyi, saved up to 150 Jews by hiding them in his home. Sheptyts'kyi also urged Heinrich Himmler not to include the Ukrainian militia and police in the action against the Jews.

Sheptyts'kyi, an avid Ukrainian nationalist, was viewed with suspicion by some Jews. These doubts and suspicions of many Jews regarding the character led Yad Vashem not to name him Righteous Among the Nations, despite some requests and demands. 

In July 1944, the Russian army liberated Lviv. According to the statistics of the Jewish committee that was organized after the war, 2.571 Jews remained, many of whom chose Polish citizenship and left the city. Their repatriation to Poland continued until the end of 1945, and the city was almost completely emptied of its Jewish inhabitants. After a stay in displacement camps, many refugees emigrated to Israel and the United States.

Once the Second World War ended, the city passed into Soviet hands and these were not better times for the Jews either. The community was never rebuilt and the cemetery never reopened. There were less than 3.000 Jews left living in Lviv and most of them were thinking about emigrating to the West or Israel.

In 1962, Soviet authorities dissolved the Jewish religious community and annexed the new Jewish cemetery to the nearby Yaniv Christian cemetery. Today it is three-quarters filled with Christian tombs and in the south there are several dozen Muslim burials. Jewish burials are concentrated around the main alley.

In 1991, Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union and the policy of religious persecution was abolished by the new authorities. The Jewish synagogue reopened its doors again and began a period of reorganization of a community persecuted and annihilated for decades, even persecuted during communism.

In the 2001 census, only 0,4% of the population of Lviv - about 712.000 inhabitants - declared themselves Jewish, which would mean that there would only be a little less than 3.000 Jews living in the city and even fewer today. , given the adverse circumstances that Ukraine is going through after the start of the war with Russia and the growing migratory trend of this community. 

The destruction of this cemetery was so resounding and forceful that remains of the Jewish tombstones destroyed first by the Nazis and then by the communists are still found on some streets and roads in Lviv. When fragments are found, the Lviv Volunteer Center of the Ukrainian Jewish Charitable Foundation “Hesed-Arieh” recovers them and then returns them to the cemetery.

Source cited and consulted:
https://forgottengalicia.com/the-lost-jewish-cemeteries-of-lviv/).

Photos of the author of the note