The Lviv Pogroms Controversy (1941) - Demographic Background

Demographic Background

The current Western Ukrainian city of Lviv was formerly known as Lwów was located prior to 1939 in Poland. It was an urban enclave with a Polish-speaking majority surrounded by a predominantly Ukrainian, rural population. The ethnic Ukrainian population before the war, however, were not allowed administrative positions to prestigious positions of authority and few were allowed a complete tertiary education.

Prior to World War II there were 110,000 Jews in Lviv. The Polish population of the city numbered 131,000 and the Ukrainian population numbered 13,000. The Polish census of 1931 gives slightly different numbers. According to that census Poles numbered 198,212 (63.5%) of the population, with Jews numbering 75,316 (24.1%) and Ukrainians numbering 35,137 (11.3%).

Over 3 million Jews lived in Poland before World War II (Second Polish Republic (1918-1939)), an estimated 20% of world Jewry (in 1887 it was an estimated 30%), many of them in the former Austrian crown-land of Galicia. Eastern Galicia is the place where the Hasidic movement was founded, Yiddish literature flowered, and a wealth of Jewish historic thought, writers, artists and scientists had their birth. The Jewish diaspora in Ukraine continues to be the 5th largest in the world.

On 17 September 1939, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied Eastern Polish territory previously agreed to in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Eastern Galicia was annexed and incorporated into Soviet Ukraine. Under the new Soviet administration the number of Ukrainian schools in region grew from 371 to 5,536 and Jewish schools from 23 to 103. Of the 7,000 Polish schools, only 984 (1940) remained.

The Ukrainians of the former eastern Galicia and the neighbouring province of Volhynia, made up about 15% of the total population in the interbellum period (Second Polish Republic (1918-1939)), and were the country's largest minority. The prewar ethnic make up of Eastern Galicia where ethnic Ukrainians made up a significant majority is disputed between Poles and Ukrainians. For example, according to Yevhen Nakonechny, the ethnic makeup of the city of Lviv differed considerably from the ethnic and national make up of Western Ukraine. Before the War there were: 4,257 thousand (73.2%) Ukrainians, 984 thousand (16.2%) Poles, and 570 thousand (9.9%) Jews. Polish researcher Piotr Eberhardt gives the following numbers: Poles 21.0%, Ukrainians 64.5%, Jews 13.7%, Germans 0.3%, and others 0.5%, at the turn of the 20th century.

The Jewish population of Lviv were involved primarily in trade and the professions: tailors, hat makers, jewelers, opticians. 80% of the tailors, and 70% of the barbers were Jewish. In 1921 74.1% of merchants were Jewish. 1,150 of the 1,700 practicing doctors, 41% of theatre workers, 43% of dentists, 45% of nurses. 2,200 lawyers (in comparison 450 lawyers were ethnic Ukrainians). Regarding language use in 1900, 76% of Galician Jews spoke Polish, 17% German, and only 5% spoke Ukrainian.