On the Vulytski Hills in Lviv, a commemoration was held in memory of Lviv academics, their children, wives and acquaintances who, in the night from 3 to 4 July 1941, were arrested by the city’s Nazi occupation authorities and on 4 and 5 July were executed without investigation or trial.
By the memorial in the form of a light stone arch, erected on the site of the tragedy, gathered representatives of Lviv’s municipal authorities, a delegation of the Republic of Poland, heads of Ukrainian and Polish universities, the academic community, clergy of various denominations, as well as Lviv residents and visiting Poles. An honour guard stood in front of the memorial; after the laying of flowers, a joint ecumenical memorial prayer was held. The city was represented at the events by the First Deputy Mayor of Lviv, Andriy Moskalenko.
The monument to the renowned Lviv scholars executed by German Nazis in 1941 was unveiled on 3 July 2011. Its design was chosen through an international competition: the winner was a joint Polish-Ukrainian work by the sculptor Oleksandr Slyva from Krakow and Lviv architects Oleh Trofymenko and Dmytro Sorokevych.
The monument is designed as an arch of ten stones symbolising the Ten Commandments. One of the elements, representing the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill!”, is deliberately “broken off”, emphasising the shattered integrity of the world when a person violates God’s law.
The memorial is located on the Vulytski Hills in the Students’ Park of the Lviv Polytechnic National University, in the area of Akademichna, Sakharova, Vidkryta and Lukasha-Karpyntsia Streets.
According to historical data, just a week after the start of the Soviet-German war, on 30 June 1941, Wehrmacht units entered Lviv. On 1–2 July, special SS units arrived in the city to eliminate those whom the Nazi regime considered its enemies. One such group, led by SS Brigadeführer E. Schöngarth, carried out, on the night of 4 July, the arrest and execution of more than forty professors from Lviv’s institutions of higher education.
Among the victims were prominent scholars, including lecturers of Lviv Polytechnic: K. Bartel, K. Weigel, A. Lomnytskyi, Bronisław and Zygmunt Longchamps de Berier, S. Piliat, V. Krukovskyi, V. Stożek and others. The annual events on the Vulytski Hills are intended to preserve the memory of this tragedy and to remind us of the price paid by Lviv’s intelligentsia during the Nazi occupation.