The Lemberg Mosaic

Book excerpt: The Lemberg Mosaic by Jakob Weiss brings to light the little-known story of the total and tragic destruction of Jewish Lemberg. In pre-war days, the city once known as Lwów was the third largest in Poland with the third largest Jewish population (after Warsaw and Lódz). While some call it the "Holocaust by Bullets," or the "Shoah of Jewish Galicia" or even the "Ukrainian Holocaust," what we now know for certain is that over one million Jews were systematically murdered during World War II in the eastern-most area of Poland, also known as Galicia, today's west Ukraine. Lemberg, dubbed the "Soul of Galicia," was a vibrant Jewish cultural center for hundreds of towns, villages, and "shtetls" in the surrounding region; south to the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary and Rumania, east to the Soviet Union, west as far as Kraków, and north to areas populated by the Lithuanian Jews. In the wake of Hitler's "final solution," all eastern Galicia was rendered Judenrein. The late Simon Wiesenthal, who had escaped from Lemberg's Janowska - a death and transit camp, now the mass grave of over 200,000 Jewish martyrs and in 1942 the re-routing point for another 500,000 sent to Belzec, the Nazi's infamous death factory - lamented that so little had been written about this important aspect of the Holocaust. He stated, "[t]here are only about a dozen accounts of the Janowska concentration camp," and concluded, "my heart bleeds when I read them, but I also feel a certain satisfaction, because after all, there are some lucky ones who survived." In fact, only 200 did, and only about 500 others survived the demise of Lemberg's Jewish community. Today, Lemberg is called L'viv and Janowska is a lonely patch of woods in Ukraine. The Lemberg Mosaic is the story of four families with deep roots and strong ties to Galicia. It details their struggle for survival - against all odds. It is one part history book, one part genealogy & forensic research, one part adventure story, and all true.