were marching into the city many incidents took place, mostly involving the Ukrainian population attacking the Polish police. The Soviet soldiers opened machine-gun fire at a column of the disarmed policemen. There were also robberies of storehouses and military depots. According to accounts from that period, the perpetrators were inhabitants of poor districts, mostly Jews and Ukrainians.
The social relations among Jewish inhabitants of Lvov differed little from those on the remaining Polish territories occupied by the Soviet Army. According to contemporary sources, both autobiographic and scholarly, and reports for the Polish government-in-exile and the Home Army command, a significant percentage of the Jewish population enthusiastically welcomed the occupier and unhesitatingly engaged in cooperation. Władysław Zych, the government in exile’s acting delegate in Lvov and commander of the Union of Armed Combat East Lvov District wrote a report not long after 1 August 1941 in which he evaluated the stance of the Jewish population during the Soviet occupation. Zych wrote, for instance, that “[a] significant number of Jews openly manifested their hostile attitude towards the Polish society, which led to a significant intensification of antisemitic sentiment among the Poles”.557 A similar tone is found in reports of the German observers staying in the city in 1940 (for instance, the German legates’ secretary Meissner, who cooperated with a Lvov commission for exchange of population) and in sparse opinions of uninvolved foreigners.
A German consulate operated in Lvov during 1938–1940. In their reports the consulate’s employees expressed clearly exaggerated opinions regarding the privileged position given to the Jews by the Soviet authorities. Likewise, the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) estimated that half of the police and NKVD functionaries were Jewish. Local informers were more cautious in their opinions, claiming that only poor Jewish proletarians were happy with the new order. According to reports of the German embassy in Bucharest, the communal boards and trade unions had all been dominated by Jews.558
