frostbite. The Jewish workers who went to work that day were compelled to
arrange the corpses evenly lengthwise and widthwise in the graves. The final
salvo at the labourers was fired at 6 p.m. More than 2,000 innocent Jews died
martyrs’ deaths. A little more than a 1,000 Jewish inhabitants remained in
Rohatyn. The surviving Jews left their homes throughout Saturday, 21 March,
to collect the corpses of the murdered lying about the market square, streets,
and on the road to the hill. Those bodies were buried in the common grave
upon the hill. This is how the Ausrottung des Judentums was conducted
in Rohatyn.⁸⁹⁸
Lvov
The campaign to “cleanse” the city of Jews was conducted in several
stages. There is every reason to claim that it has not [37] ended.
Organised pogrom campaigns were conducted alongside looting, extortion
of levies, individual acts of murder, rapes, and deportation to the worst
penal camp located on Janowska Street (where the commandant himself strangled
the victims). The history of the martyrdom of the Jews of Lvov would
require an extensive study, but to demonstrate all its horror we present a few
examples to demonstrate its most infamous stages so far. The first pogrom
in Lvov took place on 2 July 1941, that is, a few days after the city had been
seized by the Germans. The inspiration was German, while the implementation
was Ukrainian. A few thousand men were dragged out of their flats
and offices to bury Ukrainian nationalists who had purportedly been murdered
by Jews. The Jews had to walk between two rows formed by the killed
Ukrainians’ families and by the Ukrainian and Polish rabble. They were mercilessly
abused on that occasion. They then were compelled to load the corpses
onto a lorry. More than 2,000 Jews were murdered there.
The second massacre began on 25 July and lasted a week, taking a toll of
approximately 10,000 Jewish victims.
150 Jewish attorneys, engineers, and physicians were murdered on
1 August.
During the establishment of the ghetto in Lvov in November 1942, an
appalling massacre took place under the “bridge of death”. Approximately
898 On 20 March 1942, a total of 1,820 Jews were executed in Rohatyn. The Ringelblum Archive
contains a testimony which probably pertains to these events but is difficult to decipher.
See ARG I 988 (Ring. I/559); Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, pp. 821–823.
