Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lviv under Soviet and German Occupation, 1939-44

Abstract

Perceptions of reality and not reality itself determine the behaviour of people. Such perceptions are at the same time subjective and socially determined. While most historians would agree with these statements, in historical practice such truisms are often disregarded.When the perceptions of historical actors diverge from the reconstructed reality, this is seen as an expression of false consciousness. To avoid such specious conclusions I have chosen an approach based on what in German is termed Erfahrungsgeschichte, that is, the history of experience. In German both Erlebnis and Erfahrung translate as experience, but they have a different meaning. Erlebnis is the event and the emotions experienced during the event, while Erfahrung is the result of a successful interpretation of events: the events are given meaning.Following Reinhart Koselleck, Erfahrung (experience) is defined as a process in which perception, interpretation and actions are being permanently adjusted to one another.Expectations regarding the future as well as the previous conditioning of people affect this process of adjusting experiences. Both expectations and conditioning function as filters through which events are perceived, and provide models, with the help of which reality is then interpreted. The same events can result in completely different Erfahrungen, depending on the factors mentioned. In this text I will use the term experience in this sense, i.e. as Erfahrung rather than Erlebnis.

War and displacement

“…After Germany reneged on the 1939 agreement and invaded Soviet-occupied Poland, Ukraine and then Russia itself, the more than 150,000 (Mick, 2011) Jewish population of Lwów (now again Lemberg) were set to work in the Janowska camp on the outskirts of the city but allowed to live outside. After a few months they had to stay in what became the Janowska concentration camp (Pahiria, 2020).…”

From Soviet to Post- or Anti-Soviet: Two L’viv Museums of War in Search of a New Ukrainian Narrative of World War II

“…While most of the historical events that took place in L'viv during and after World War II are well researched, including previously silenced topics like the L'viv pogroms and the Holocaust (e.g., Pohl 1996;Mick 2010Mick , 2011Mick , 2015Himka 2011;Struve 2015), less attention has been paid to their representation throughout the Soviet period and its transformation afterwards. The recent anthology Krieg im Museum: Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europa by Ekaterina examines museums and memorials in Eastern Europe, but the only contribution on Ukraine is Iryna Sklokina's chapter on the Kharkiv Historical Museum.…”

Tarik Cyril Amar. The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.

“…When it comes to numbers and details on the Holocaust, Amar relies on the expertise of colleagues like Dieter Pohl (1996Pohl ( , 2000, Christoph Mick (2010Mick ( , 2011, and John-Paul Himka (2011), without avoiding controversial subjects, like the Lviv pogrom of July 1941 and local collaboration by both Ukrainians and Poles. He presents the annihilation of Lviv's Jewish population as "the deepest, most visible, and most dramatic change wrought by Lemberg's German occupation" (p. 94) and the expulsion of Poles as the completion of the "violent ethnic simplification of the Second World War" that shaped the city's first Ukrainization (p. 145).…”