The Jewish community of Lviv suffered the most
significant losses in World War II. In 1939 there were more than 150,000 Jews
living in the city, which was a third of its population: as of September 1944,
3,400 Jews were registered in Lviv, of which about 800 had lived in the city
before the war. Several thousand Lviv Jews survived the Holocaust outside the
city but never came back.
Most of Lviv's synagogues and Jewish community’s
buildings were destroyed. One of the few surviving shrines was the building of
the Jakob Glanzer Schul at vul. Vuhilna 3. During the Nazi occupation, the
building was used as a warehouse for products sold at the market on the neighbouring
pl. Św. Teodora. In the postwar years, the synagogue became a meeting place for
the officially registered Jewish community of Lviv. Its first head was David
Sobol, a lawyer, and the rabbi was Berko Teichberg.
In addition to being a place of religious gatherings,
the synagogue served as a social center for a community deeply traumatized by
the Holocaust events. In the synagogue, Jews could receive material and food
aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. From the summer of
1944, the building walls were plastered with announcements about the search for
surviving relatives. The synagogue also became a temporary refuge for the Jews
who were to be repatriated to Poland. Most of them were deprived of their
pre-war property and did not want to stay in the city where their persecutors
still lived and everything reminded them of the death of their relatives. For
example, Lily Polman-Stern, who lost her father, brother, grandfather and
grandmother in the Holocaust, recalls that "the city that once had such a
noble name, Leopolis, tragically became a Necropolis for my mother and
me."
In the summer of 1945, dramatic events unfolded around
the synagogue. "Bloody calumnies" are spreading in the city, rumours
that Jews are kidnapping Polish and Ukrainian children and killing them in the
synagogue. An angry crowd gathers on pl. Św. Teodora, calls are made for the
synagogue to be set on fire, and only militia intervention prevents a possible
pogrom. The Lviv Oblast Prosecutor's Office initiates an investigation. The
record of the interrogation of June 14, 1945 has been preserved:
By
the order of the prosecutor of the Lviv region comrade Korneta, senior
investigator of the Lviv Oblast prosecutor's office, 1st grade jurist Lavreniuk
checked the [alleged] murder of children in the Jewish synagogue. (...)
Upon
careful inspection of the building, no human corpses have been found, neither
in the apartments, nor in the synagogue hall, nor in the basements and sewers.
A
large number of chicken feathers and drops of blood from the slaughter of
chickens have been found in the barn. No traces of the murder of children have
been found in the synagogue, the fact being confirmed by this report
(ДАЛО, 239/2/63/32)
Anti-Jewish violence caused by rumours of "bloody
calumnies" was not uncommon in postwar Eastern Europe. The pogrom in the
Polish city of Kielce in July 1946 began with rumours telling that a Polish
boy, Henryk Blaszczyk, had been kidnapped. The victims of the pogrom were 42
Jews. In addition to the anti-Semitic myth, which dates back to the Middle
Ages, researchers cite accusations of Jews collaborating with the communist
regime, restitution of Jewish property, general social demoralization, and the
devastating effects of Nazi propaganda among the causes of postwar anti-Jewish
violence.
Thus, in post-war Lviv, Holocaust survivors had to
face social tensions and hostility. Several hundred survivors, led by David
Sobol, as well as a group of Lubavitcher Hasidim, decided to leave the city
immediately after the anti-Jewish riots. Lev Serebriany became the new head of
the community (till his arrest in 1947 on charges of being linked with the
"Zionist underground"); later it was headed by Yakiv Makhnovetsky.
During the "Khrushchev thaw" the synagogue was visited by
representatives of diplomatic missions of Japan, Israel and the United States.
In 1962, the Soviet authorities closed the synagogue on trumped-up charges of
currency speculation; the premises were handed over to the Polygraphic Institute.
There was a gym there. The synagogue paintings were brushed with oil paint, and
the niche for the Torah (Aron ha-Kodesh) was bricked up. In 1991, the synagogue
was restituted to the Jewish religious community. Today, the Sholom Aleichem
Society of Jewish Culture is located there.
