Lwów Ghettos

The Lwów ghetto was a specific area in Lwów, Ukraine where the Nazis forced Jews to live during the Holocaust. Jews were not allowed to live outside of these areas.

The Nazis established the ghetto in 1941 and liquidated it in 1943. ("Liquidation" meant deporting all of the ghetto's residents to concentration camps or killing them.)

In 1941, there was a series of pogroms towards Jews and violent riots in Lwów. Almost 7,000 Jewish people were killed during this period. The Nazis forced Jewish men to live in barracks in Lwów and to do forced labor. Then they executed the men by shooting them.

A little more than 5,000 Jews survived the pogroms and riots. The Nazis forced them to live in the Lwów Ghetto.

In late 1941, the Nazis opened the Janowska concentration camp and began liquidating the Lwów ghetto. They began sending Jews who could work to Janowska to do forced labor. Meanwhile, they sent weak, very young, and elderly people to Bełżec extermination camp, where they were murdered in gas chambers. They executed many of the ghetto's Jewish leaders (like the Judenrat) by hanging in early September 1942.

By early June 1943, almost all of the Jews in the ghetto were gone. Around 823 survived in concentration camps or by escaping the ghetto.

Lwów was liberated on 27 July 1944 by the Soviet Bolshevik Red Army. At that time, it had been occupied by the fascist Nazi government for three years.

• Rubzewitz Ghetto
• Kraków Ghetto
• Warsaw Ghetto
• Theresienstadt ghetto and concentration camp
• Ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust