Massacre of Lviv Professors - History

History

By July 2, 1941, many of the initial terror actions were halted, yet the individual, planned executions continued. At approximately 3 o'clock in the evening Prof. Kazimierz Bartel was arrested by one of the Einsatzgruppen operating in the area.

During the night from 3 to 4 of July, several dozen professors and their families were arrested by German detachments - each one consisting of an officer, several soldiers, Ukrainian guides and interpreters. The lists were prepared by their Ukrainian students associated with OUN. Some of the professors mentioned on the lists were already dead, specifically Adam Bednarski and Roman Leszczyński. Among arrested was professor Roman Rencki, a director of the Clinic for Internal Diseases at Lwów University, who was kept in NKVD prison and whose name was also on the list of Soviet prisoners sentenced to death. The detained were transported to the Abrahamowicz's dormitory, where despite the preconceived intention to kill them, they were tortured and interrogated. The head of the department in the Jewish hospital, professor Adam Ruff was shot while having an epileptic attack.

In the early morning of July 4 one of the professors and most of his servants were set free while the rest were either brought to the Wulka hills or shot dead in the courtyard of the Bursa Abrahamowiczów building. The victims were buried on the spot, but several days after the massacre their bodies were exhumed and transported by the Wehrmacht to an unknown place.

According to a Polish historian the victims were not involved in politics in any way. According to a Ukrainian historian, out of approximately 160 Polish professors living in Lviv in June 1941, the professors chosen for execution were specifically those who actively cooperated with the Soviet regime in some way between 1940-1941.