The NKVD prison massacres in Lviv were a mass murder of prisoners held in Lviv prisons and detention centers, carried out by Soviet NKVD and NKGB officers in the last days of June 1941.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Beria issued an order to execute all political prisoners held in the western regions of the Soviet Union who could not be evacuated further into the country. In line with this order, Soviet security officers murdered between 3,500 and 7,000 people in Lviv's prisons – Brygidki, the prison on Łącki Street, the prison in Zamarstyniv, and their branches. Among the victims were Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, including some women and minors. This was the largest and most notorious crime committed during the so-called NKVD prisoner massacres in the summer of 1941.
After Wehrmacht units entered Lviv, the local population, inspired by the Germans, organized a several-day pogrom against the Jewish population, who, according to the Żydokomuna stereotype, were identified with the Soviet regime and its crimes. The massacre in Lviv's prisons was also widely publicized by Nazi propaganda and served the Germans as a pretext for carrying out mass executions of Jews.
Lviv in the first days of the German-Soviet war
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The initial weeks of the war were very favorable for the Germans. Wehrmacht divisions managed to break the forces of the Soviet border military districts and penetrate deep into Soviet territory. Among the successes was the German advance in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, where the largest and best-equipped grouping of the Red Army, the Southwestern Front, was defending. In the first twenty days of the war, its units suffered enormous losses in men and equipment and were forced to retreat nearly 250 km east of the German-Soviet border.
Lviv, under Soviet occupation since September 1939, was located about 80 km from the border. On the first day of the war, its downtown was bombed twice by the German Luftwaffe. The raids resulted in numerous human casualties but relatively minor material damage. Although the city was on the peripheral direction of the German offensive, panic quickly gripped the local occupation authorities and the incoming Soviet population. On the night of June 22 to 23, the "easterners" began a mass flight eastward, leaving behind empty offices, party premises, and police stations. The first to hastily "evacuate" were NKVD officers, militsiya, and prison guards. It wasn't until June 24, under explicit orders from higher authorities, that some of the occupation apparatus staff briefly returned to Lviv.
On June 24, an armed diversion organized by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists occurred in Lviv. In various parts of the city, the organisation's militsiya fired on columns of Soviet troops and hunted down individual Red Army soldiers and occupation personnel. At the prison on Łącki Street, Ukrainian nationalists managed to free 270 inmates. They also disrupted the march of the 4th Mechanized Corps and the 8th Mechanized Corps through the streets of Lviv and carried out unsuccessful attacks on the NKVD headquarters on Pełczyńska Street and the prison in Zamarstyniv. In response, the Soviets brutally suppressed the rebellion, executing people caught with weapons on the spot and opening fire from rifles and tank guns on all windows and attics from which shots were reportedly fired. They even fired at the towers of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption. The chaotic and brutal pacification resulted in the deaths of both insurgents and innocent civilians. Up to 4,000 people – mainly Ukrainians, but also some Poles – were arrested and imprisoned in Lviv's prisons and detention centers.
On June 25, the garrison commander of Lviv declared martial law in the city. By this time, the Ukrainian insurgency was largely subdued, although some sources indicate that the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists members continued sporadic attacks until June 28.
Massacres in Lviv prisons
Prelude
During the Soviet occupation, there were three prisons operating in Lviv:
- The prison on Łącki Street (prison no. 1), which functioned as an internal prison for the NKGB;
- The prison in Zamarstyniv (prison no. 2), which before the war served as a military prison;
- The prison on Horodotska Street (prison no. 4), commonly known as Brygidki.
Arrestees by the Soviet security apparatus were also detained in the former court of appeals building on Batory Street, in court buildings on Sądowa Street, and in a building on Jachowicz Street, which pre-war housed a state police station. However, Soviet documents did not distinguish these places as separate facilities, implying that they were merely branches of the three aforementioned prisons.
Documents found in Soviet archives indicate that as of 10 June 1941, there were a total of 5,145 prisoners in Lviv prisons. However, it is certain that the number of prisoners was higher in the last days of June. After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war and the suppression of the Ukrainian diversion, hundreds of Lviv residents were arrested but not yet registered in the prison records.
Initially, according to pre-war plans, the NKVD intended to evacuate prisoners deep into the Soviet Union. On 23 June 1941, Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, Vasiliy Chernyshov, approved an evacuation plan for prisoners held in prisons in Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and Lithuania. The plan stipulated that 1,000 prisoners from Lviv would be sent to prisons in the Soviet Bashkiria, 1,000 to prisons in the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 1,000 to prisons in the Arkhangelsk Oblast, 1,000 to prisons in the Ivanovo Oblast, and 591 to prisons in the Molotov Oblast. That same day, Captain of State Security, Andrei Filippov, head of the NKVD prison administration in the Ukrainian SSR, acting on orders from the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Vasyl Serhiyenko, issued Colonel Zavyalov, commander of the 13th NKVD Convoy Troops Division, an evacuation plan for 23,400 prisoners held in Western Ukraine.
Reports from the 13th NKVD Convoy Troops Division reveal that only one transport with 527 prisoners managed to leave Lviv for the east on June 23. Polish sources indicate that around 800 people were led out of one of the Lviv prisons, possibly the one on Jachowicz Street, and forced to march east. The prisoners had to walk through Tarnopol, Chortkiv, and Berdychiv, eventually reaching Moscow on August 28. Along the way, the guards killed those unable to keep up with the column. In Moscow, the prisoners were loaded onto trains and continued their evacuation by rail, arriving in Pervouralsk on 16 November 1941. Only 248 prisoners reached the destination, with many unable to leave the train carriages unaided and others dying from typhus soon after.
The evacuation of prisoners was accompanied by the evacuation of 12,000 Polish prisoners of war who were employed building railways between Lviv and Przemyśl, Lviv and Tarnopol, Lviv and Rivne, and the airfield in Skniłów. Most were forced to march east; on June 24, some were marched through Lviv. Along the way, those who could not keep up were killed by the guards. After reaching Volochysk, the Polish soldiers were loaded 100 to a freight car and sent to Starobilsk. During the journey, they received no water and only 150 grams of bread and a salty fish each. By 28 July 1941, all Polish prisoners of war reached their destination, with at least 1,800 perishing during the evacuation. For instance, more than 200 prisoners of war from a 2,000-strong column from Skniłów were murdered.
The lack of sufficient railway cars, the chaos of the early days of the war, and the rapid German advance quickly rendered the plans to evacuate Lviv's prisons unfeasible. Nonetheless, Soviet authorities were determined not to allow the "enemies of the people" to be freed by the Germans. On June 24, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria, ordered NKGB regional offices to execute all political prisoners held in the western regions of the Soviet Union who could not be evacuated. According to Beria's order, those convicted of "counter-revolutionary activities", "anti-Soviet activities", sabotage, and diversion, as well as political prisoners under investigation, were to be executed.
Course of the extermination action
In Lviv, the first murders of prisoners occurred on June 22. Hastily, among others, 108 prisoners sentenced to death were executed. The next day, the liquidation of prisoners held in the NKGB internal prison on Łącki Street began. Executions carried out in the early days of the war claimed hundreds of lives but did not take on an organized character. Chaos and panic that engulfed the Soviet occupation apparatus also affected the prison services. Officials and guards fled the city, leaving prisoners locked in the prisons. Additionally, the 233rd NKVD Convoy Troops Regiment, whose task included securing Lviv's prisons, was paralyzed between 23 and 24 June by a series of contradictory orders that included both evacuating from Lviv and remaining in the city.
The situation changed dramatically on June 25, when mass and systematic liquidation of inmates began in all Lviv prisons. Bogdan Musiał and Alexander Guryanov linked the commencement of the extermination action to the arrival in the city of the deputies of the People's Commissars for Internal Affairs and State Security of the Ukrainian SSR. Musiał suspected that they had been tasked with ensuring the execution of Beria's order to shoot "counter-revolutionary elements". He pointed out, in this context, to an NKVD report from June 26, which indicated that with the arrival of the commissars, the plan to evacuate prisoners into the interior of the Soviet Union was ultimately abandoned in favor of releasing criminal prisoners and transporting up to 200 so-called pieriebieżcziks to the east. The report did not specify the fate of the remaining prisoners, but the events of the following days indicate that their liquidation was ordered.
Massacres in Lviv's prisons usually followed a similar pattern. NKVD and NKGB officers called prisoners from their cells, then individually or in small groups led them to the prison basements and killed them there. Individual and mass executions also took place in the prison yards. In the final hours before the German troops entered the city, NKVD officers killed prisoners directly in their cells, opening fire through the bars or throwing grenades into the overcrowded rooms. The bodies were buried in graves dug on the prison grounds or left in cells and basements (some of which were bricked up). Sometimes the victims were buried outside the prisons, for example, in Bodnar Park. Executions were carried out with car engines running to drown out the sounds of gunfire and the screams of the murdered. At the same time, the surrounding streets were cordoned off by Soviet militsiya, preventing outsiders from accessing the prison buildings. The extermination of prisoners continued until the Soviet troops left Lviv.
Brygidki
In the Brygidki prison, there were likely about 4,000 prisoners. According to Dieter Schenk, the first executions were carried out there as early as June 22. However, on the evening of June 23, the Soviet guards left the building, bolting the gates and leaving the prisoners in locked cells. The next morning, the prisoners realized the situation and, after breaking down the cell doors, made their way to the prison courtyard. However, only about 220–362 people, mainly common criminals according to NKVD reports, managed to escape the prison grounds – through a gate forced open from the outside and through the roof. The remaining prisoners either could not breach the gates or did not dare to leave the building. Meanwhile, at around 4:00 AM on June 25, NKVD officers returned to Brygidki. With machine-gun fire, they forced the prisoners back into their cells, killing at least thirteen and wounding six others in the process. The cells were locked again, and the prisoners were ordered to lie face down on the floor.