Lviv, Lvov, Lemberg

The month just past was marked by the war between Russia and Ukraine, and there was no day we did not read or hear about a city of Ukraine called Lviv or Lvov or Lemberg. This city is the city where my father-in-law, Herr Duvid Locker, was born… On his way to America, in Istanbul, he met my mother-in-law, Fräulein Rachel Berkovitz. They married, and my wife Anna was born. Those were the first years in which the law to leave the fez and wear the hat was being enforced. A very serious duty for government officials and the military. My father-in-law, very capable at making hats, decided to stay here for a certain time, and he stayed until the end of his days. His hats were very famous in style and in models; even Atatürk was one of his clients. His expertise was seen more and more in the field of the navy, for the admirals and officers.

My father-in-law told me many things about Lviv or Lvov or Lemberg. At the end of the First World War the city passed for a short time to Ukraine, and then went back to being Polish again. It is after 1939 that it became part of the Soviet Union. Today it is a city of Ukraine with almost 700,000 souls, with minorities such as Russians, Poles, Armenians, Jews and Crimean Tatars. When my father-in-law left Lviv, the Jewish population was almost 100,000 persons, and it is said that industry and commerce were in the hands of the Jews. Under the occupation of Soviet Russia, thousands of Jews of Lviv who did not want to collaborate with the Russians and did not want Russian nationality were exiled to Siberia. Despite this exile, with the Jews who fled from Germany they came to more than 160,000. When the Germans took Lviv, the population of Ukraine was very happy and celebrated this occupation with ardour. This was the end of the Jews. The pogroms of the Ukrainian nationalists were not light in the ghetto of Lviv. Simon Wiesenthal too, in 1989, mentioned these cases.

What a pity that Lvov, before the war, was a cultural, religious and political centre for the Jews. During perestroika, the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Cultural Society built a monument commemorating the dead Jews of Lviv: a monument representing an old Jew praying and raising his head and arms to the sky. The name of Meir Balaban, the famous Jewish historian and writer of Lviv who lived at the end of the 19th century, was given to a prestigious avenue of the city. Sholem Aleichem, on his way to the United States, stayed a long time in Lvov waiting for his emigration papers, and praised the cleanliness and the beauty of this city. Sholem Aleichem was a champion of Yiddish, considering this language as an official language. He wrote many works in Yiddish and tried to revive it. Would that Ladino had the same luck.

From what my father-in-law told me, the little villages beside Lemberg were just like the shtetl of 'Tevye the Dairyman' and 'Fiddler on the Roof'.