Murder story of Lwow Jews in the Brygidki Prison

…It was claimed that the Red Army used Jews to shoot the Aryans…in Brigitki [Brygidki]. So they started to catch Jews on the street or in their homes …, supposedly to bury the shooting victims…. In Brygidki all the Jews who were taken to perform this task, to dig graves, were accompanied by the … shouting of Ukrainian policemen; some of those who finished digging the graves were shot in those same graves, while others who had been left alive had to cover the graves with earth….

The following was recounted by a Jew who survived these tortures: "At about ten in the morning, together with two rabbis, the brothers Lewin, I was taken to the prison on Kazimierzowska Street. We were driven with rifle-butts blows into one of the cells and ordered to face the wall with our arms raised. I do not remember how many executioners watched us inside the cell, but I do believe there were several, all Germans. They told us they would conduct an investigation, which began by asking our names and surnames and dates of birth. Our answers were confirmed in the form of a blow in the side with a rifle butt. Anyone who was so stunned by the first blow as to delay giving an answer was struck again and again until he answered the question. One of the inquisitors of this system found it too simple. To diversify it, he told his comrades to strike the detainees in the face as well. After this inquisition, the first ten detainees were told that the investigation had produced sufficient grounds for sentencing them to death. Frightened and beaten, we could not believe our ears. Soon the first ten were escorted out of the cell. A moment later the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun drowned out the moans of the dying. Four of the tallest and strongest among us were selected to bury our slaughtered comrades in return for the promise that we would be the last to die. Those who refused to bury their brethren were shot dead on the spot....

...Everything began on Wednesday morning, July 2. The retreating Soviets left behind three prisons: the so-called Brygidki, a prison overflowing with prisoners, located on Kazimierzowska Street.... [Its] population had consisted mostly of criminals and political prisoners from the Lvov area. Many of them had been executed and buried in prison courtyard.... The Gestapo decided to reap some propaganda benefit.... For that purpose, Lvov Jews had to dig up the graves in the presence of a special commission; the work would be photographed, and the German propaganda machine would thereby acquire first-class material.... After that, all hell broke loose. The Germans seized Jews in their homes and on the street and forced them to work in the prisons. For that purpose they utilized the services of the Ukrainian police force, which they had set up recently. The Polish and Ukrainian residents rendered whole-hearted assistance to the Germans.... Every morning over one thousand Jews were assembled and would then be split up among the three prisons. Several hundred were put to work immediately breaking up the concrete floors and removing the corpses. Other Jews were packed into a small courtyard or some prison cell and shot. Not all the unlucky ones who were assigned the job of opening the graves returned to their homes. Some, having fainted from the stench from the graves, were dragged away and shot immediately. There were cases of infections in the Brygidki. Wearing gas masks, the German taskmasters, officers and soldiers, strolled among the Jewish workers with taunting cries such as "vengeance is sweet." Great crowds of "Aryan" residents of Lvov attended this horrendous spectacle. The prison square, the courtyard, the hallways were filled with people who looked on with gleeful satisfaction and with unconcealed Schadenfreude. From time to time hysterical voices could be heard: "Shoot them, the murderers!" Here and there a hand rose to help a German hit the Jews. During the first days of the occupation over three thousand Jews perished in the Lvov prisons. Among them was one of the most well-known and respected rabbis of Lvov, Dr. Ezekiel Lewin, and also his brother, the rabbi of Rzeszow, Aharon Lewin....

…The slaughter started immediately… The hunt for Jewish men and women went on unabately. Several thousand were herded into the prison on Kazimierzowska Street… The captives were mercilessly tortured and many were shot….

...And on the second day after Germans entered Lwów, two Ukrainian policemen came to the house we lived in, telling us that they were looking for young Jews for work, that Russians had left a police station dirty and that it had to be cleaned. I and another boy were taken to do the cleaning job. Our parents were worried, [but they were told]: "It is ok, in the evening they will be back home." We were taken and I saw that we were not heading toward the police station. They took us to the central prison of Lwów called Brygidki and there we were taken into the prison yard. It was said that at the end [before they retreated] that the Russians had killed some prisoners... and buried them in the prison yard. When we came there, we saw a pile of several bodies and, in the middle, there was a gauntlet of German [sic] soldiers. We thought they were Germans, but afterwards it turned out that they were Ukrainians in German uniforms. They looked like German soldiers, with rifles with attached bayonets, forming a gauntlet. Many Jews were brought there and Ukrainian policemen forced them to run the gauntlet. The Jews started to run the gauntlet; they were beaten with rifle buts and stabbed with bayonets. Everyone fell down, the wounded as well as those killed. It was not possible to pass through the gauntlet. I saw that a group of German officers standing at the end, taking photographs of all this.... When I reached the beginning of the gauntlet I was struck with a rifle but and simply fell down and other Jews fell on top of me, both the wounded and the dead. I was lying below them all, completely covered in blood. I laystill for twenty minutes until there were many wounded and dead. The Germans brought... carts and Jews had to throw [the bodies] of the murdered and wounded ones, including me, onto the carts, which had to drive to the Jewish hospital. After... the carts had left the prison gates, after several hundred meters, I jumped off the cart and ran home.... I was covered in blood....

...On June 30, 1941 all the businesses in the city were closed. I learned, however, that there was still bread in one of the stores so I went there. On the way, I saw large placards of the Ukrainian nationalists led by Stephan Bandera. Further on there were calls and cheering for Bandera and Hitler. They called to annihilate Jews and communists so that order in [local] affairs would finally come. On my way, I was stopped by a Ukrainian guard who demanded to see my papers. When he learned that I was a Jew, he punched me in the face. The guard arrested me and took me to Brigidki [Brygidki] prison. The warden who arrested me wore a blue-yellow armband. Thousands of Jews were gathered in the square in front of the prison. More and more Jews were dragged in by Ukrainians with blue-yellow armbands. I myself was taken past many Jews who had been abused and wounded. I was all covered in blood. I saw how a little child was grabbed by the legs and smashed against a wall. With other Jews, we were forced into a courtyard of the burned and still smoking prison, past a line of German soldiers, to remove the bodies. All the time more Jews were brought in and shot to death...