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Academics Executed on the Wulecki Hills in L’viv: From a Local Wartime Crime to a Translocal Memory Event

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2020

Eleonora Narvselius  and
Igor Pietraszewski
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Abstract

In 2011, a monument commemorating a group of Polish academics killed during the Nazi occupation was unveiled at the site of their death in L΄viv, presently a Ukrainian city. This event became the pinnacle of a commemoration that had developed quite autonomously on both sides of the redrawn Polish-(Soviet)Ukrainian border. The commemorative project and memory event underpinning it are especially interesting owing to the partial recuperation of links with the prewar local genealogies of the Polish-Ukrainian borderland. This article explores how a special historic occurrence that took place in wartime L΄viv/Lwów became an issue of continual political significance invested with different truth, originality, and identity claims in Poland and Ukraine. The authors focus on various actors who managed to transform memory about the murdered academics into a public commemorative project and elevate the role of translocal links in the successful realization of the commemorative initiative in question. The concluding part summarizes principal lessons pertaining to commemoration of perished population groups in east-central European borderlands that might be drawn on the basis of the discussed case.

Keywords

Polish-Ukrainian borderlandcommemorationstranslocal linksWWIIintelligentsia
Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 139 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2020

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Footnotes

Eleonora Narvselius wants to thank Yevhen Poliakov (Manchester University) and Roman Masyk (L΄viv University) for their help in searching for archival sources for this study. She is also most grateful for Alexandra Wachter (University of Vienna) and Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair for sharing with us footage of the official ceremony on the Wulecki Hills in 2016.

References

1 In the German-speaking parts of Europe the city is still known as Lemberg. The authors call it by its Polish name, Lwów, when referring to the interwar years or to the Polish academicians whose careers were built then. The Ukrainian name, L΄viv, indicates the postwar period comprising the Soviet decades and Ukraine’s independence.

2 Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L΄viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, Ind., 2016), 1–2.

3 On the Iron Curtain turning to a permeable “Nylon Curtain” see György Péteri, “Nylon Curtain–Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russia and East-Central Europe,” Slavonica 10, no. 2 (July 2004): 113–23.

4 Among them is the inaugural of the restored Pantheon of the Defenders of Lwów, also known as Cemetery of the Lwów Eaglets, in 2005.

5 See Grzegorz Motyka, Wołyń’43: Ludobójcza czystka–fakty, analogie, polityka historyczna (Kraków, 2016); Georgiy Kasianov, “Burden of the Past: The Ukrainian-Polish Conflict of 1943/44 in Contemporary Public, Academic and Political Debates in Ukraine and Poland,” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 19 no. 3–4 (December 2006), 247–59; Eleonora Narvselius, “Tragic Past, Agreeable Heritage: Post-Soviet Intellectual Discussions on the Polish Legacy in Western Ukraine,” Carl Beck Papers, no. 2403 (2015), 1–76.

6 John D. Brewer, “Memory, Truth and Victimhood in Post-Trauma Societies,” in Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (London, 2006), 214. So far, studies of “mnemonic reconciliations” have resulted in many interesting research findings; see, for example, Michael H. Bernhard and Jan Kubik, eds., Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration (New York, 2014), 13; Elin Skaar, Siri Gloppen, and Astri Suhrke, eds., Roads to Reconciliation: Conflict and Dialogue in the Twenty-First Century (Abingdon, Oxon, 2005); Kristin Leigh Kopp and Johanna Nizynska, eds., Germany, Poland and Postmemorial Relations: In Search of a Livable Past (New York, 2012); Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, ed., Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe (New York, 2016).

7 Clemens Greiner and Patrick Sakdapolrak, “Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Perspectives,” Geography Compass 7, no. 5 (May 2013): 373–80.

8 Uilleam Blacker and Alexander Etkind, “Introduction,” in Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind, Julie Fedor, eds., Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (New York, 2013), 6.

9 Marek Tamm, ed., Afterlife of Events: Perspectives on Mnemohistory (Basingstoke, Eng., 2015), 4.

10 No written arrest warrant or order about the execution has ever been found, see Andrii Bolianovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo pol΄s΄kykh uchenykh u L΄vovi v lypni 1941 roku: Fakty, mify, rozsliduvannia (L΄viv, 2011), 23. Also, no perpetrators have been sentenced or imprisoned for this particular crime. The case was heard at the International Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946 and then reopened in Germany and Poland, but it became practically impossible to sentence the perpetrators. See Dieter Schenk, Noc morderców: Kaźń polskich profesorów we Lwowie i holokaust w Galicji Wschodniej (Kraków, 2011), 9–18; 307–72 [translation from German: Dieter Schenk, Der Lemberger Professorenmord und der Holocaust in Ostgalizien (Bonn, 2007)]; Zygmunt Albert, Kaźn profesorów lwowskich: Lipiec 1941 (Wrocław, 1989), 130–31; Bolianovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo, 63; Olia Hnatiuk, Vidvaha i strakh (Kyiv, 2015), 50.

11 Timothy D. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010), 411.

12 Intelligenzaktion started in the fall of 1939 after the military defeat of Poland, see Anna Meier, Die Intelligenzaktion: Die Vernichtung der polnischen Oberschicht im Gau Danzig-Westpreusen (Saarbrücken, 2008). A similar operation, AB Aktion, took place in 1940 in the General Government.

13 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, 2009).

14 Józef Krętosz, “Likwidacja kadry naukowej Lwowa w lipcu 1941 roku,” w Krystyna Heska-Kwaśniewicz, Alicja Ratuszna i Ewa Żurawska, eds., Niezwykła więź Kresów Wschodnich i Zachodnich: Wpływ lwowian na rozwój nauki i kultury na Górnym Śląsku po 1945 roku (Katowice, 2012), 17–18; Bolyanovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo pol΄s΄kykh uchenykh, 144–45; Schenk, Noc morderców; Jan Draus, Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza we Lwowie 1918–1946: Portret kresowej uczelni (Kraków, 2007), 110–17. On losses of the Lwów academy from the Nazi and Soviet repressions, see the mentioned book by Draus, and also Adam Redzik, “Uniwersytet Lwowski w latach 1939–1946,” in Adam Redzik, Roman Duda, Marian Mudry et al., Academia Militans: Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza we Lwowie (Kraków, 2017), 984–89,1032–52; Krętosz “Likwidacja kadry naukowej,” 13–14; Tadeusz Skarzyński, Martyrologia, straty wojenne i okupacyjne środowiska Politechniki Lwowskiej (1918–1945),” in Politechnika Lwowska macierz polskich politechnik. Materialy konferencji naukowej, Wrocław, September, 25–26 (Wrocław, 1995), 137–77.

15 The survivors were released after international protests. However, the course of action was different in L΄viv, as Governor-General Hans Frank made it clear that he did not want to repeat the “mistake” made in Kraków (Redzik, “Uniwersytet Lwowski,” 1032). Aside from the murder on the Wulecki Hills and extermination of Jewish academics by the fall of 1943, the L΄viv academia was decimated in other ways. All in all, L΄viv lost 91% professors of medicine, 36.4% of natural sciences, 33.3% of law, 24% of humanities, and 64% of theology (Włodzimierz Bonusiak, Kto zabił profesorów lwowskich? [Rzeszów 1989], 112).

16 During the first Soviet period (1939–41) all of them stayed in L΄viv, and some even became deputies of the L΄viv City Council (Albert, Kaźń profesorów, 126–27; Bolianovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo, 15; Schenk, Noc morderców.) Following this logic, another given candidate for the arrest would be the world-renowned mathematician Stefan Banach, a member of the Academy of Sciences of the UkrSSR. However, he managed to survive and even get employment as a feeder of lice in Prof. Rudolf Weigl’s famous laboratory during the Nazi occupation. The alleged collaboration with the Soviets was an argument against commemoration of professors raised by a former mayor of post-Soviet L΄viv Vasyl΄ Shpitser: “Pol΄s΄ki vcheni, rozstriliani u L΄vovi, spivpratsiuvaly z bil΄shovykami, eks-mer,” Zaxid.net, April 4, 2011 at https://zaxid.net/polski_vcheni_rozstrilyani_u_lvovi_spivpratsyuvali_z_bilshovikami__eksmer_n1126313 (accessed February 7, 2020).

17 Bonusiak, Kto zabił, 39.

18 See their detailed overview in Anatolii Plichko, Do pytannia pro uchast΄ ukraintsiv u vbyvstvi lvivs΄kykh profesoriv ulitku 1941 roku (do 75-richchia podii), Sait Komisii Matematyky NTSh at www.math.lviv.ua/ntsh/files/Plichko.pdf (accessed February 7, 2020).

19 Schenk, Noc morderców, 174; Roman Volchuk, Spomyny z peredvoiennoho Lvova ta voiennoho Vidnia (Kyiv, 2002); Hnatiuk, Vidvaha i strakh, 47–48.

20 About the postwar Menten trials see Hans Knoop, The Menten Affair (London, 1979).

21 Altogether, during the WWII, Poland lost 45% of its physicians and dentists, 40% of university professors, over 15% of teachers, 57% of lawyers and over 18% of its clergy (Ian C. B. Dear and Michael R. D. Foot, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Second World War [Oxford, 1995], 894).

22 Considering that the victims’ collective identity motivated the murder, it has been argued that the assault on the Polish intelligentsia could be classified as a case of genocide against the Poles, see Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland´s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947 (Jefferson, NC, 1998), 22–23.

23 During the interwar period, majority of the academic staff in L΄viv consisted of ethnic Poles. Poles also made up around 40% of the academic staff during the “first Soviets” in 1939–41. Among those with the title of full professor, Poles were clearly the majority (52), compared with Ukrainians (22) and Jews (8). At the Polytechnics, Medical Institute, and Zoo-Veterinary Institute the majority of professors were also Poles, see Grzegorz Hryciuk, Polacy we Lwowie 1939–1944: Życie codzienne (Warsaw, 2000), 130; Tarik Cyril Amar, The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists (Ithaca, 2015), 69.

24 Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L΄viv, 1914–1947; Amar, The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv, 88.

25 The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was a radical political movement fighting for the establishment of an independent state of Ukraine. It practiced revolutionary terrorism and directed its main efforts primarily against the Soviets and Poles. After its split in 1940, its two factions became known as the OUN(b), “Banderites”, and the OUN(m), “Mel΄nykites”, after their leaders Stepan Bandera and Andrii Mel΄nyk. The role of the OUN remains contested in historiography, especially in regards to collaboration with Nazi Germany, participation in the extermination of Jews, and the mass murders of Poles in Volhynia and Galicia in 1943. On the possible participation of Nachtigall in the killings of Jews at the beginning of the Nazi occupation of L΄viv, and on the OUN’s share of responsibility for these crimes see John-Paul Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 53, no. 2–4 (April 2015), 209–43; Piotrowski, Poland´s Holocaust, 210–12; Per Anders Rudling, “Theory and Practice. Historical Representation of the Wartime Accounts of the Activities of the OUN–UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Ukrainian Insurgent Army),” East European Jewish Affairs 36, no. 2 (December 2006); Grzegorz Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960. Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i Ukraińskiej Powstańcyej Armii (Warsaw, 2015), 74–99; Kai Struve, “OUN(b), nimtsi ta antyievreis΄ke nasyl΄stvo v Halychyni vlitku 1941 roku,” Ukraina Moderna 24 (May 2017), 223–28; Karel C. Berkhoff and Marco Carynnyk, “The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets΄ko’s 1941 Zhyttiepys,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 23, no. 3–4 (December 1999): 149–82. Nevertheless, the OUN and its structures did not figure as an accused part in the Nuremberg trial, and neither were they charged for the murder of the L΄viv academics, see Schenk, Noc morderców, 129–32; Bolianovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo, 138–39.

26 On numerus clausus and “ghetto benches” at interwar Polish universities see Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, 1983), 73; Mariusz Kulczykowski, Żydzi–studenci Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej (1918–1939) (Kraków, 2004). On Ukrainian-Polish strife in the Lwów academia, see Draus, Uniwersytet Jana Kazimierza, 63–70. As a result of the escalated Ukrainian-Polish fighting in 1943, one Ukrainian and one Polish professor of medicine were assassinated. The prominent Ukrainian physician, Prof. Marian Panchyshyn, died of heart attack in the wake of this event (Hryciuk, Polacy we Lwowie, 355; Redzik, “Uniwersytet Lwowski,” 1045–51).

27 As an anonymous correspondent wrote in the wartime Polish newspaper Nurt in May 1943: “Almost all the names of the medical department were stroke out once and for all by the German crime and Ukrainian prompts”; quoted in Jacek Trznadel, Kolaboranci: Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński i grupa komunistycznych pisarzy we Lwowie 1939–1941 (Warsaw, 1998), 13. The version maintaining that the prescription lists had been submitted to the Nazis by Ukrainian students active in the OUN also finds support among researchers, see Albert, Kaźń profesorów, 115; Schenk, Noc morderców, 174; Bonusiak. Kto zabił, 72–85.

28 Among them is Tadeusz Piotrowski who states that “it is beyond dispute that thousands of Jews and Poles lost their lives in Lwów in those first days of July, that most of the professors died . . . on July 4, 1941, and that Nachtigall was not withdrawn from that city until July 7. Those who deny Nachtigall’s participation in these atrocities must tell us what exactly the regiment did there during that time. In any case, since no one has ever stated that the Ukrainian, pro-Nazi Nachtigall opposed these atrocities or in any way tried to prevent them, its members are guilty at least of the sin of omission” (Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust, 210–11). See also Bonusiak, Kto zabił, 38–85.

29 The Soviet authorities could immediately make use of it to contrast the tragic fate of the professors in the Nazis’ hands with their favorable treatment by the Soviets. Nevertheless, the Anti-Fascist Committee of Soviet Scientists instructed the L΄viv regional authorities in a secret note from 16 January 1945 not to publicize information about the murder until the Committee submits its own version to the western press. Derzhavnyi arkhiv L΄vivs΄koi oblasti (DALO), fond P-3, op.1, od. zberihannia 242, ark. 5.

30 Although Soviet and Polish authorities used similar rhetoric on WWII, joint commemorations were not practiced on the former Polish territories annexed by the USSR.

31 Teresa Suleja, Uniwersitet Wrocławski w okresie centralizmu stalinowskiego 1950–1955 (Wrocław, 1995), 200–30.

32 Teresa Kulak, Mieczysław Pater, Wojciech Wrzesiński. Historia Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1702–2002 (Wrocław, 2002), 202, 288–89.

33 Janusz Goćkowski and Bohdan Jałowiecki, “Prace nadesłane na konkurs ‘Czym jest dla ciebie miasto Wrocław’ jako materiał socjologiczny,” in Jan Wojtaś, ed., Wrocławskie reminiscencje socjologiczne (Wrocław, 2009), 67–96; Teresa Kulak, Wrocław: Przewodnik historyczny (Wrocław, 1997), 278.

34 Schenk, Noc morderców, 346–48; Bolianovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo, 49–69.

35 In particular, at the Wrocław University, the Wrocław Polytechnics, the Silesian Polytechnics in Gliwice, and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

36 The postwar Wrocław Polytechnics alone employed fifty-four academics from Lwów, see Zbysław Popławski, “Gdzie jest dziedzictwo Politechniki Lwowskiej,” in Politechnika Lwowska macierz polskich politechnik: Materialy konferencji naukowej (Wrocław, 1995), 95.

37 Roman Mierzecki, “Budowa wrocławskiego pomnika w latach 1956–1964 ku czci polskich profesorów zamordowanych we Lwowie w 1941 roku,” Analecta 16, no. 1–2 (2007), at www.lwow.home.pl/mierzecki/analecta.html (accessed February 7, 2020).

38 Its scheduling corresponded neither to an anniversary of the murder of the Lwów professors nor to any WWII-related event significant in the local context. Instead, it coincided with the inauguration of a new academic year.

39 Quoted in Mierzecki, “Budowa”; see also: Słowo Polskie, October 5, no 236 (1964), 1. Curiously, although the opening address of Bolesław Iwaszkiewicz, the Head of the National Council of Wrocław, did not mention Lwów, the speech itself was revealingly titled “The speech on the occasion of opening the monument of the murdered Lwów professors” (Archiwum Politechniki Wrocławskiej, sygn.3312.2, karta 6.2).

40 Kulczyński managed to survive the war in Kraków.

41 Mierzecki, “Budowa.”

42 Albert, Kaźń profesorów, 133.

43 Even that time the funding came not from the state, but from the academic authorities of Wrocław, see Mierzecki, “Budowa.”

44 Olga Mikołajczyk, “Pomnik rozstrzelanych profesorów lwowskich,” Wrocławski portal matematyczny, at www.matematyka.wroc.pl/doniesienia/pomnik-pomordowanych-profesorow-lwowskich (accessed February 7, 2020).

45 A. Drbal, M. Kotsab, “Profesor Kaspar Weigl (1880–1941), tretii zaviduvach Kafedry heodezii L΄vivs΄koii Politekhniky, Heodeziia, kartohrafiia i aerofotoznimannia 74 (2011): 4, at http://ena.lp.edu.ua:8080/bitstream/ntb/10234/1/30.pdf (last consulted March 7, 2020); Albert, Kaźń profesorów, 134.

46 On close postwar cooperation between Polish and Soviet authorities in the sphere of cultural politics see: Patryk Babiracki, Soviet Soft Power in Poland: Culture and the Making of Stalin’s New Empire, 1943–1957 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2015).

47 Hnatiuk, Vidvaha i strakh, 50; Bolianovs΄kyi, Ubyvstvo. Notably, one of the chief Soviet propagandists, the writer Vladimir Beliaev, published two different versions of his pamphlet on the murder of the professors. The earlier version titled Taiemnytsia “Vul΄ky” [The Secret of Wulka] was published in Ukrainian. Beliaev mentioned the practice of drafting “black lists” by the OUN and concluded about a possible denunciation of the professors (Volodymyr Beliaev and Mykola Rudnyts΄kyi. Pid chuzhymy praporamy [Kyiv, 1956], 121). Almost two decades after the campaign against Oberländer, Beliaev published a revised version of the same text in Russian. This time he wrote unequivocally about the “shooting of the professors by the hands of the loyal fascist servants, the Ukrainian nationalists, legionnaires of Nachtigall” (Vladimir Beliaev, Ia obviniaiu! [Moscow, 1978], 29).

48 Yaroslav Hanitkevych, “Tragediia hrupy l΄vivs΄kykh profesoriv u 1941 rotsi (do 70-ii richnytsi straty vchenykh),” Naukove Tovarystvo im. T. Shevchenka, On-line zhurnal Tovarystva, blog Yaroslava Hanitkevycha, October 10, 2011, at ntsh.org/content/ganitkevich-ya-tragediya-grupi-lvivskih-profesoriv-u-1941-roci-do-70-yi-richnici-strati (accessed February 7, 2020).

49 See an eye-witness account in Jerzy Janicki, “Zawiłe dzieje jednego pomnika,” Przekrój 1 (1991), 32.

50 Rafał Dutkiewicz, interview with Igor Pietraszewski, Wrocław, July 15, 2015; Andrzej Wiszniewski, interview with Igor Pietraszewski, Wrocław, July 20, 2015.

51 Reproduced by Albert Kaźń profesorów; and in the album Emmanuil Mys΄ko. Skul΄ptura (L΄viv, 1999).

52 Bohdan Tscherkes, interview with Eleonora Narvselius, L΄viv, April 15, 2015.

53 Ihor Melnyk and Roman Masyk, Pam΄iatnyky ta memorial΄ni tablytsi mista L΄vova (L΄viv, 2012), 237; Jerzy Janicki. “Zawiłe dzieje jednego pomnika.”

54 William Jay Risch, Ukraine’s Window to the West: Identity and Cultural Nonconformity in L’viv, 1953–75 (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2001), 133–148, at etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:osu1486474078047143 (accessed February 7, 2020).

55 Dismantled in 2019.

56 DALO, fond Р−1338, op. 1, od. zberigannia 1068, аrk. 22–23 (Proekt pam΄iatnyka). The language of the original is Ukrainian; all names are reproduced in Ukrainian transcription.

57 Volodymyr Badiak, Pam΄iatkookhoronna istoriia L΄vova (L΄viv, 2014), 104.

58 DALO, fond Р−120, op. 4, ark 62 (Rasporiazheniia po L΄vovskomu ordena Lenina politekhnicheskomu institutu). The monument still exists.

59 L΄vovskaia Pravda, May 9, 1976, 4.

60 A character from one of Maxim Gorky’s short novels: a young man who with his flaming heart lit people’s way in the darkness.

61 Andrzej Wiszniewski, interview with Igor Pietraszewski, Wrocław, July 20, 2015.

62 Iwona Juszkiewisz and Olgierd Czerner, eds. Praojcowie i ojcowie: dorobek polskich absolwentów Wydziału Architektonicznego Politechniki Lwowskiej. Wystawa (Wrocław, 1995).

63 Jacek Żur, Consul of Poland in L΄viv, interview with Eleonora Narvselius, L΄viv, April 17, 2015.

64 As Professor Wiszniewski recollected, when he visited L΄viv in the early 2000s, the modest stone on the Wulecki Hills was overgrown with nettles and looked like an abandoned grave.

65 Stręk, Łukasz, “Wrocław i Lwów jako miasta partnerskie,” Zeszyty Naukowe Koła Wschodnioeuropejskiego Stosunków Międzynarodowych 4 (2005), 57Google Scholar.

66 The stake of the mayor Rafał Dutkiewicz in the L΄viv monument correlates with his enthusiastic support for the academic traditions of Wrocław. He graduated from Wrocław Polytechnics, was taught by professors originating from Lwów, and on his initiative the insignia of Lwów’s Jan Kazimierz University rectors, stored after the war in Kraków, were eventually transferred to Wrocław in 2006 (Rafał Dutkiewicz, interview with Igor Pietraszewski, Wrocław, July 15, 2015).

67 Bohdan Tscherkes, interview with Eleonora Narvselius, L΄viv, April 15, 2015.

68 Available at https://city-adm.lviv.ua/public-hearings/204151-protokol-gromadskih-sluhan-projektu-mistobudivnoji-dokumentaciji-sporudzhenna-pamatnika-vchenim-m-lvova-rozstrilanim-nacistami-u-1941-roci-na-vuleckih-pagorbah-infrastrukturi-dla-jogo-obslugovuvanna-ta-blagoustroju-parku-studentiv (accessed March 12, 2020).

69 Bohdan Tscherkes, interview with Eleonora Narvselius, L΄viv, April 15, 2015.

70 Personal communication with Yaroslav Hrytsak, May 18, 2017.

71 The monument for the victims of the L΄viv ghetto was unveiled in 1992.

72 The phrase from Dutkiewicz’s address that was avidly commented on in Polish media was: “Scientific works of the L΄viv professors murdered here by the Nazis were most often published in the Polish language”, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVrZa8nv71g (video unavailable).

73 “Lwowski pomnik polskich profesorów bez napisu,” TVP Info, July 3, 2011, at www.tvp.info/4814195/lwowski-pomnik-polskich-profesorow-bez-napisu (accessed February 7, 2020).

74 http://uni.wroc.pl/wiadomości/pomnik-na-wzgórzach-wuleckich/we-lwowie-odsłonięto-pomnik-rozstrzelanych-profesorów (no longer available). Such an inscription could affect the credibility of the memory site, as such a document has either never been found or, alternatively, never existed.

75 This information was confirmed by Bohdan Tscherkes.

76 Melnyk and Masyk, Pam΄iatnyky, 239.

77 Emphasis on the uniting power of religious ethics played a crucial role in the orchestration of another Polish-Ukrainian commemorative event that drew international attention, namely the unveiling of the restored Lwów Eaglets Cemetery in 2005, see Liubomyr Khakhula,“Rizuny ” chy pobratymy? Suchasni pol’s΄ki dyskursy pro Ukrainu (L΄viv, 2016), 178–207. The intended emphasis of the religious component following the eventual success of the commemorations at the Cemetery of the Lwów Eaglets (Polish teens who had fallen during the Polish-Ukrainian struggles for Lwów in 1918) was also confirmed by Yaroslav Hrytsak, the head of the Polish-Ukrainian jury that selected the winning project of the professors’ monument.

78 Bohdan Tscherkes, interview with Eleonora Narvselius, L΄viv, April 15, 2015.

79 This rhetoric of the common “European home” was prominent in official speeches delivered at the unveiling of the monument.

80 Available at http://www.polska1918-89.pl/pdf/mord-na-profesorach-lwowskich---lipiec-1941,2200.pdf (accessed March 11, 2020). The same was previously stated in the letters of the League of Descendants of the Lwów Professors to presidents of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma in 2002 and Viktor Yushchenko in 2005. Nevertheless, an investigation conducted by the IPN confirmed the old conclusions about the German implementers of the murder and closed the case in 2006.

81 Jerzy Borzęcki, “Skandaliczne przemówienie i zakazane słowo ‘polskich,’” Kurier Galicyjski, July 15–28 (2011), 9; see also http://www.lwow.com.pl/profesorowie/pomnik/pomnik.html (accessed March 9, 2020). The text of Schenk’s undelivered speech was reproduced in the Polish translation of his book (Noc morderców, 7–8).

82 Vasyl΄ Kosiv, interview with Eleonora Narvselius, L΄viv, September 24, 2013. See also http://portal.lviv.ua/news/2011/07/03/150003 (accessed February 28, 2020).

83 Mayor Dutkiewicz mentioned in an interview that the intact preservation of this older unofficial monument was one of the conditions for building the new one. Rafał Dutkiewicz, interview with Igor Pietraszewski, Wrocław, July 15, 2015.

84 Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, “Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin’s Memorials,” American Sociological Review 67, no. 1 (February 2002), 32.

85 Under such circumstances, the visit of Rafał Dutkiewicz to L΄viv in July 2017 was a well-timed political move. The mayor of Wrocław not only took part in the annual commemoration on the Wulecki Hills, but also left a generous donation in support of the Ukrainian diaspora in Poland, see www.polukr.net/uk/blog/2017/07/prezident-vroclava-peredav-50-tisyach-yevro-fondu-ukrayina/ (accessed February 10, 2020).