Boryslav (Boryslaw, Borislav) | Lviv

A "koshere" or ozokerite mine © Taken from kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Drohobycz/shtetls/history-of-boryslaw.html Panska street in Boryslav © Taken from kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Drohobycz/shtetls/history-of-boryslaw.html Pola and Serafina Strasser go skiing with a friend. Pola was deported to Belzec and gassed upon arrival along with some members of her family. Serafima managed to survive the war. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Charlotte Elmowitz Group portrait of students and their teacher in a high school in Boryslaw. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Barbara Kelhoffer Bieganiec Group portrait of members of a mandolin orchestra in Boryslaw. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Barbara Kelhoffer Bieganiec Studio portrait of Chawa Weissbart Kamerman, the maternal grandmother of the donor. She and her husband, David Kamerman, were executed by the Nazis in 1941 in Boryslaw. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Alex Hertzberg David Neger in front of his store in Boryslav before 1939. © Personal Family archive Group portrait of young people posing around a wooden shelter in Boryslav.© United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Barbara Kelhoffer Bieganiec The Neger family: David, Henia, Esther and Bina before the war. David Neger was murdered during the Holocaust in Boryslav. © Personal Family archive The Neger Family, David, Henia and Esther, before the war. David Neger was murdered during the Holocaust in Boryslav. © Personal Family Archive Bina and her mother Henia at her father’s grave. After the war, Henia moved the body of her husband to the Jewish cemetery in Sambir. © Personal Family Archive A group of Schupo policemen who served in the town of Boryslav © Yad Vashem Photo archives / Bina’s nanny Fesia. She helped the Neger family during the war and saved Bina’s life by hiding her and pretending to be her mother. © Personal Family Archive / An old refinery where the Jews used to work © Markel Redondo - Yahad-In Unum Halyna K., born in 1929:"At the beginning the Jews continued to live normally, but two or three months later the Germans arrived on horseback. We didn’t even suspect that they would take the Jews to be shot."© Rita Villanueve/Yahad-In Unum Guenrikh S., born in 1931, described the column of Jews escorted by the Germans with dog © Markel Redondo - Yahad-In Unum On the execution site with the witness © Markel Redondo -Yahad - In Unum Yahad’s team during the interview © Markel Redondo -Yahad - In Unum One of the execution sites of the Jewish victims in Boryslav © Markel Redondo - Yahad-In Unum

Execution of Jews in Boryslav

3 Execution site(s)

Kind of place before:
Forest
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944
Number of victims:
About 10,000

Witness interview

Genrikh S. recalled : “I saw Jews at the train station being loaded into a train car at this station. The Jews left a warehouse to go to the train cars, following a kind of corridor. They had small suitcases. It was very hot. They were screaming. There were policemen and Germans at the train station, as well as local railway workers.” (Witness N°1817, interviewed in Boryslav, on August 31, 2013).

German archives

“The Jews who were designated for execution were brought by the mentioned units to the empty oil shafts, past the slaughterhouses. First, they had to get undressed and lay on their stomachs. Groups of 10-15 people were taken to the grave and were placed at the edge of the grave and killed from behind, with a bullet to the back of the head, with a revolver.” [Deposition of Franz R. taken in Delmenhorst, August 17, 1964, B162-5003].

Historical note

Boryslav is located about 75km southwest of Lviv. The Jews living in Boryslav worked in the oil industry and in sales.  The Zionist organizations were very present and played an important role in the everyday life between the wars. The majority of Jewish children studied in public schools. On the eve of World War II in 1939, there were about 13,000 Jews in the city. The town was occupied by German forces on July 01, 1941.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

On the day following the Germans’ arrival, local Ukrainians and Poles, led by German soldiers, murdered approximately 300 Jews. The first anti-Jewish aktions began at the end of November 1941, when around 1500 Jews, the majority of whom were deemed weak and unable to work, were shot by the German security police in the forest near the town of Truskavets. During the winter of 1941-1942, many Jews died of hunger and disease. From the end of July till the beginning of November 1942, about 8.500 Jews from Boryslav and neighboring villages, like Pidbuzh and Skhidnytsya, were sent to the Janowska camp or Belzec. Meanwhile, two separate ghettos were created in Boryslav. During the second aktion in February, 1943, 600 Jews were shot by members of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, German police, and the Schupo. The isolated executions of Jews took place all the time from May till June 1943 until the total liquidation of the Boryslav ghetto at the end of June 1943. Over the course of one week, the German forces murdered around 700 Jews (sick, young and elderly Jews). The remaining Jews were deported to different labor camps (Plaszów and Mauthausen) from April to June 1944. In all, over 10,000 Jews native to Boryslaw were shot by Germans or murdered in the camps.

Jewishgen

Go to the Townpage on JewishGen Kehilalinks website

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