This was one of three Lviv prisons where political prisoners were murdered by the NKVD as the Soviets retreated in the first weeks of the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The Nazi discovery of thousands of decomposing corpses ostensibly killed by „Jewish-Bolsheviks“ legitimized pogroms carried out by Ukrainian nationalists at Nazi behest.
I find the wording here interesting. This talks about the „communist“ with a small „c“ occupation authorities, and says the majority of those shot were Ukrainian, along with Poles, Jews, and Austrians. The denaturalization of Jews removes any claim to state protection. That most victims were Ukrainian is contested. One man who was not shot was Father Zynoviy Kovalyk, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Priest who the NKVD crucified. This act may have influenced Andrey Sheptytsky, the Lviv Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archbishop, who for the first year of the invasion felt the Nazis would be better than the Soviets. He acquiesced (at least) in Ukrainian nationalist pogroms against Jews, though later he would act to save Jewish lives. I’m going to the Sheptytsky museum tomorrow and am eager to see what they say.
