Lvovo

Lvovo was an agricultural colony established in the first half of the 19th century by Jewish settlers from the Vitebsk and Mogilev provinces of the Russian Empire. Initially only Jews lived in the colony, but in the mid-19th century the Russian authorities settled Germans there to instruct the Jews in agricultural methods. In 1897 Lvovo's 1,338 Jews comprised 95 percent of the total population. A majority of Lvovo's Jews worked in agriculture or in the food-processing industry. The population of Lvovo was hit hard during World War I and the following years of revolution. Most of the colony's men were drafted into the army so that many families were left without a bread-winner. During the civil war Lvovo suffered from the pogroms staged by various warring parties: dozens of Jews lost their lives. In the early 1920s famine and epidemics claimed the lives of hundreds in the Lvovo area. The revival of the colony of Lvov was facilitated by generous aid from various Jewish and non-Jewish international organizations such as the Joint, the Swedish Red Cross, and the mission of the Norwegian North Pole explorer Fridtjof Nansen. In 1927 the Lvovo Rural Council officially became a Jewish council and was incorporated into Kalinindorf County, the first Jewish county in the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s a Jewish kolkhoz Pobeda Ilyicha (Lenin's Victory) was established in Lvovo. In the 1920s and 1930s Lvovo had a Yidish school. A separate Yiddish agricultural school was transferred from Bolshaya Sedemenukha (Kalinindorf) to Lvovo in 1926, when Lvov had 1,356 Jews, who comprised 97 percent of the total population. The local Jewish population decreased significantly during the 1930s due to urbanization, collectivization, and the Great Famine. Lvovo was occupied by German forces on August 24, 1941. Since most of the men had been conscripted into the Red Army, there largely remained only women, children, and elderly people. About 300 Jews managed to leave the village before the arrival of the Germans. A large proportion of the Jews who remained, about 160 people, were murdered in the fall of 1941. Lvovo was liberated by the Red Army on March 12, 1944.