This year, an extensive series of events dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of Lwow Jewish ghetto and Yanovska concentration camp of forced labor, which became the most tragic events of 1943, were held at the initiative of B’nai B’rith Lepolis Lodge.

The following organizations took part in the aforementioned events: Lwow City Administration, B’nai B’rith Lepolis Lodge named after Emil Domberger, Lwow City Museum “Territory of Terror” (Hitler and Stalin totalitarian regimes), Lvov Center of History of Central and Eastern Europe (Center for Urban History), Hesed Arieh Jewish Charitable Foundation, Lwow Organ Hall, Sholom Aleichem Lwow Jewish Culture Society and Jewish Heritage of a town of Rohatyn.

Since March 2018, numerous conferences, round tables and international meetings devoted to the aforementioned tragic events have been organized in Lwow.

The most important memorial events took place on September 2, 2018. However, a month before the Terror Territory Museum installed a series of stands dedicated to the Holocaust during the Second World War in the city, including the sites of the Yanovska concentration camp, the entrance to the ghetto, next to the building where the Gestapo was located, near a fragment of one of the walls of the Golden Rose synagogue destroyed by the Nazis (the area next to it is called the Synagogue Space now), and in one of the city squares, in order to commemorate the victims of the pogrom in July, 1941.

At noon on September 2nd, within the framework of memorial events, the Mayor of the city had a meeting with the representatives of organizations and individuals who explore, preserve, and popularize the Jewish heritage. The meeting was followed by the ceremony called “The Key to the City”.

The symbolic meeting had a special background. At one of Lwow flea markets, the American sculptor Ms. Rachel Stevens found a bronze key topped with the Star of David, which turned out to be the key to one of numerous synagogues in pre-war Lwow. She made 75 glass copies of the key, which became a symbol of the tragedy of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and the return of memory of the Jewish communities of Galicia, on the other. Therefore, the ceremony of presenting the keys became an expression of gratitude for the contribution to the return of memory of the history and cultural heritage left by the Jewish population of cities and towns (shtetls) of historical Galicia. We are pleased to mention that among the honorees there were 6 members of B’nai B’rith Leopolis Lodge.

Then the events moved to the street named after Omelyan Kovch, a Ukrainian Orthodox Catholic priest who saved Jews during the Holocaust and died in a Nazi concentration camp. There, a meeting in memory of the victims of Yanovska concentration camp took place. The keynote of the meeting was the presentation of two grandsons of Lwow Jews surviving the Holocaust: Arthur Schwartz (Germany), the grandson of an active member of European B’nai B’rith, Dr. Alexander Schwartz, and Raphael Altman, the grandson of Yanina Hesheles, the daughter of the chief editor of Lwow Jewish newspaper Chwyla / Wave, which had been published in Lwow before the beginning of World War II. The meeting ended with the First and Third Parts of Symphony No. 6 “The Tragic” by Gustav Mahler performed by the Symphony Orchestra of Lvov Organ Hall.

In the evening of the same day, a concert-prayer was held in the area of the “Synagogue Space” memorial, in which Jewish and Ukrainian bands and soloists took part.

The Jewish community of Lwow is happy to inform that the first steps have been made towards the erecting the appropriate monument to the Jewish victims of Yanovska CC (the only concentration camp in Europe without any memorial).