Abstract
During the first few weeks the Germans let the Ukrainiansmake fools of themselves, and the Ukrainians took full advantage of the opportunity. Ukrainian “warriors” could be seen standing on the running boards of German vehicles showing the drivers the way. They also took it upon themselves to organize their own militias and police departments, and in their self-appointed role as enforcers might be seen harrying Jews on their way to work.
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Notes
- 1.
“Free Ukraine”
- 2.
“L′viv District”
- 3.
Also called the Adriatic race. A sub-category of the Europid (or white Caucasian) race, so termed by physical anthropologists in the early twentieth century. In more recent times this and similar typologies have come under criticism, especially since the rise of molecular anthropology.
- 4.
“I am not a Jew.”
- 5.
“If you’re lying I’ll shoot you like a dog.”
- 6.
“I will settle the Jewish question.”
- 7.
Many concentration camps were built in Germany between 1933 and 1939. Between 1939 and 1942 the number of camps—now including those on occupied territory—increased fourfold. In the early spring of 1941 the SS, together with doctors and officials of the “T-4 Euthanasia Program”, began systematically killing selected concentration camp prisoners in “Action 14f13”.
- 8.
At the infamous Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, appointed by Hitler as chief executor of the “Final solution of the Jewish question”, presented a plan for the deportation of the Jewish population of Europe and French North Africa to German-occupied areas of eastern Europe, and the exploitation of those fit for labor to work on road-building projects, the surviving remnant to be annihilated after completion of these projects.
- 9.
The “three grandparents” definition had been adopted as early as the ratification of the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. By the protocols of the Wannsee Conference (see the preceding footnote) “half-Jews” (those having just one Jewish parent) were to be considered—regardless of their religious affiliation—as Jews (with some exceptions) while “quarter-Jews” were to be classified with those of German blood (again with certain exceptions).
- 10.
In the sense that it involves the grandparents’ own status as Jews and thus leads to a regress over the generations. However, the definition makes more sense when one recalls that the concept of a “Jewish nation” had at some time official standing in several Middle European countries, including the Habsburg monarchy and possibly Poland.
- 11.
Possibly Włodzimierz Mozołowski (1895–1975), professor under J. K. Parnas in the Lwów University medical faculty.
- 12.
In German, Unteroffiziere.
- 13.
According to other sources, this happened on July 8.
- 14.
(German) Office of Work, or Labor Exchange
- 15.
Rudolf Stefan Weigl (1883–1957), famous Polish biologist. Discovered the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. In 1941 the Nazis ordered him to set up a vaccine production unit in his Institute at Lwów University. He employed Polish intellectuals, Jews, and members of the Polish underground, thus affording them protection from the Nazis, and his vaccines were smuggled into the ghettos in Lwów and Warsaw, thus saving many lives. He used human blood to feed lice, the vector for epidemic typhus, but took pains to protect his human “injectors” from infection.
- 16.
“important for purposes relating to war”
- 17.
Emil Adolf von Behring (1854–1917), German physiologist. Nobel laureate for medicine in 1901.
- 18.
“The Lwów Times”. Lemberg is the German name for Lwów.
- 19.
“You fatty!”
- 20.
Rather than the form of address used in formal conversation, namely “Pan” (Sir).
- 21.
An ancient trench running between the Don and the Volga near where these rivers approach most closely. The Volga end is near the former Stalingrad. The Germans actually went beyond the trench and down through the isthmus leading to the Crimea, where they took Sevastopol′ after a long siege. But on the other hand further north they got no further than Stalingrad.
- 22.
Kherson is a port at the mouth of the Dnieper River where it debouches into the Black Sea. It is the capital of the region of Ukraine with the same name.
- 23.
The Schutzpolizei (Schupo) was the defense branch of the Landespolizei, the state police of Germany. During the Nazi regime, it was made part of the Ordnungspolizei, an organ of the Nazi state.
- 24.
“They still eat quite well here.”
- 25.
“Are you a Jew?”
- 26.
“We’ve also dealt with the churches.”
- 27.
Town in the Lwów district, now in western Ukraine.
- 28.
Mieczysław Gębarowicz (1893–1984), outstanding Polish historian and art historian. From 1920 to 1939 associated with both Lwów University and Polytechnic. Appointed professor at Lwów University in 1936. As director of the Ossolineum during World War II, he endeavoured to save the museum’s exhibits and book collection from destruction.
- 29.
“atrocity propaganda”
- 30.
“redistribution detachment”. Perhaps Einsatzgruppe is intended here.
- 31.
“Sandy Hill”, a hill in Lwów’s Zniesienie Park.
- 32.
A suburb of Lwów.
- 33.
“One does not give one’s word of honor to a Jewess.”
- 34.
A military fortress built by the Austrians in the second half of the nineteenth century. Several thousand prisoners of war were killed there by the Nazis during World War II, when it was used as a concentration camp.
- 35.
“splendid fellows”
- 36.
There are many towns of this name in Poland. This one was one quite close to Lwów.
- 37.
That is, office of the bursar.
- 38.
Maria Morska (born Anna Frenkiel) (1895–1945), actress, journalist, feminist, and member of the Warsaw theatrical demi-monde; in particular, was wont to give poetry recitals in the caf´e Pod Picadorem. Attended a boarding school in Broadstairs, near Dover, before returning to Poland and tasking up a theatrical career.
- 39.
Stanisław Loria (1883–1958), Polish physicist. Professor of physics at Lwów University from 1917 to 1941. After the war participated in the organization of a Polish university in Wrocław. Moved to Poznań in 1951.
- 40.
Józef Marian Chełmoński (1849–1914), Ignacy Aleksander Gierymski (1850–1901), Wlastimil Hofman (1881–1970), and Teodor Axentowicz (1859–1938) were all highly gifted Polish artists.
- 41.
“We travel here, we travel there/Our homeland is no more!”
- 42.
As noted earlier, Mark Kac had gone to the US in 1938. His parents and brother were indeed murdered by the Nazis.
- 43.
Maria Dąbrowska (1889–1965), Polish writer, essayist, journalist, and translator. Formerly a member of the impoverished landed gentry. Considered one of the greatest of twentieth century Polish novelists. Active also in politics. Human rights activist in Poland from around 1927. She lived mainly in Warsaw during the war, working in the Polish underground at keeping Polish culture alive.
- 44.
In Polish, Armia Krajowa (AK). Polish resistance in World War II began already at the defense of Warsaw in September 1939. Shortly thereafter, the underground organization “Service for Poland’s Victory” (Służba Zwycięstwu Polski) was formed, renamed the “Union for Armed Struggle” (Związek Walki Zbrojnej (ZWZ)) in November 1939. Then in February 1942, the “Home Army” (Armia Krajowa (AK)) was formed from the ZWZ, absorbing most other Polish underground movements over the following 2 years. At its peak, the AK numbered some 400,000 soldiers, as well as a greater number of sympathizers, and became the main Polish underground force. Its most important fields of activity involved sabotage, diversionary actions, intelligence, and propaganda. Its major operation was the tragically unsuccessful Warsaw Uprising of August 1–October 2, 1944. The AK was disbanded on January 20, 1945, by which time Polish territory had been cleared of German forces by the advancing Red Army.
- 45.
“Did you not have Jewish parents?”
- 46.
“No, just one grandmother.”
- 47.
Henryk Balk (1901–1941), Polish-Jewish scholar and literary critic.
- 48.
Possibly Jan Poratyński (1876–1941), pharmacist and social activist in Lwów.
- 49.
The traditional unified armed forces of Germany.
- 50.
Possibly Małgorzata Wanda Żukotyńska, whose portrait was painted in 1929 by the artist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885–1939) of the Polish “Formist” group.
- 51.
As opposed to a ritus Romanus—thus a rite imported from a foreign land.
- 52.
Former assistant—together with Marceli Stark, Jan Herzberg, and others—of Banach.
- 53.
A contemporary estimate put the number of Jews remaining at this time in Lwów at between 120,000 and 150,000.
- 54.
The highest mountain range of the Carpathians, forming a natural border between Poland and Slovakia.
- 55.
The so-called Saxon period of Polish history dates from 1697 to 1763, when the kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were also Electors of Saxony: August II the Strong and August III. At that time Saxon military forces were stationed in Poland, laying waste to the land during domestic rebellions and the Great Northern War (1700–1721) in which August II embroiled Poland.
- 56.
Sometimes called “Leopolitans” after the Latin name “Leopolis” for Lwów.
- 57.
“May be used by Jews”
- 58.
“For Germans only”
- 59.
Czesław Białobrzeski (1878–1953), Polish physicist and philosopher.
- 60.
None of these rumors was true. The prominent French physicist Paul Langevin died in 1946, ´Emile Borel in 1956, and Henri Lebesgue died in Paris in 1941, but not at the hands of the Germans.
- 61.
A village near Jasło.
- 62.
In German, Auschwitz. A town in southern Poland, about 50 km west of Kraków. During World War II the German Nazis built there the largest of their concentration camps—a network of concentration and extermination camps consisting of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz, together with 45 satellite camps. Here people from all over German-occupied Europe were incarcerated. Various sources estimate the number of victims—gassed and then incinerated, on an industrial scale—at Auschwitz as between 2.5 and 4 million, 90 % of whom were Jews.
- 63.
“Cold Water”, a village near Lwów, about 15 km from the city’s center.
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Steinhaus, H. (2015). Homeless Wandering. In: Burns, R., Szymaniec, I., Weron, A. (eds) Mathematician for All Seasons. Vita Mathematica, vol 18. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21984-4_10
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