whose first ordinances against Jews included confiscation of radios, forced labour, and the expulsion of unregistered individuals from the city.
On the night of 29–30 July, the 600-strong Ukrainian Nachtigall Battalion571 marched with the Germans into Lvov. It took control over the city hall, the Saint George’s Cathedral, the radio station, and the prisons on Łąckiego and Zamarstynowska streets. The same day, without consulting the Germans, OUN-b activists proclaimed Ukraine’s sovereignty and set up a provisional government with Yaroslav Stetsko as prime minister. The propaganda posters that appeared on the building walls urged revenge on communists and the Jewish population. The pogrom that began on the next day continued until 3 July, clearly stimulated by the Germans (anti-Jewish posters were posted in the city, German film chronicles informed about the massacres in Soviet prisons, and a special Wehrmacht crew filmed the Ukrainian pogrom). The main pretext for the massacre was the discovery of bodies of prisoners, mostly Poles and Ukrainians, murdered by the fleeing Bolsheviks.
Known as Brygidki, the largest prison was located in a former St. Brygida convent at Kazimierzowska Street 24, which the Russians set ablaze before leaving. In June 1941 it held 3,688 prisoners. After the German invasion of the USSR, the “old” prisoners were joined by a group of Ukrainians suspected of participation in armed sabotage on 24–25 June, when OUN groups opened fire at the retreating columns of troops. The prison at Łąckiego Street 1 and the military prison at Zamarstynowska Street 9 each had about 1,000 prisoners, while the prison on Jachowicza Street (known as Małe Brygidki) had 752 prisoners. In the afternoon of 22 June or the next morning, 572 prisoners were deported in a special military transport. Most of them were executed between 24 and 28 June. The German occupier estimated the number of victims at about 4,000, while exhumations conducted in 1941–1942 put the number at 3,100–3,500. There were more than 200 Jews among the murdered victims. One of the corpses found in the prison on Zamarstynowska Street was identified as Leon Wajnsztok, the editor of Chwila. However, on 9 July in an article in Völkischer Beobachter, Valentyi Shuster denied that Jews were among the victims of the NKVD (bodies of ten Jews described as “wealthy
