The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 - part 11

September 21, 2015

Carolyn reads Chapter 20, “Lvov.” The situation found in the prisons of Lvov/Lviv, Ukraine when the Wehrmacht first entered the city on June 30, 1941 was shocking, to say the least. The prisons were filled with thousands of brutally murdered Ukrainians and some Poles - the work of the NKVD, Stalins secret police. In this program:

• Eyewitness accounts of finding 4,000 decomposing corpses in the prisons of Lvov, and thousands more in Zolochov, Rivne, Dubno and Lutsk;
• How German air crews were among those murdered in the hospitals and prisons;
• Why the local populations killed up to 7,000 Jewish residents in reprisal after the Soviets left;
• How Soviet propaganda tried to blame the killings on the Germans at the Nuremberg Tribunals, and through disinformation campaigns even up until today;
• Otto Ohlendorf testimony (and here);
  
• Two German newsreels are on this page: 2nd and 4th on the top row. 58min

Image below: Weary Ukrainians greet the German Wehrmacht in Western Ukraine in the summer of 1941. Note the women at left in traditional costume carrying flowers. Enlarge Two more photos here (relatives discover victims of NKVD in Lvov on June 30, 1941) and here (murdered ethnic Germans are being identified by their relatives at a Ternopil GPU prison on July 10, 1941)