Sunflowers and Butterflies

48″ x 36″ oil on cradled panel

Woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs – Medova Street, Lviv, 1941.

The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists from June 30 to July 2 and July 25 to July 29, 1941 during the Wehrmacht’s attack on Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in World War II.

On the morning of July 25, the Ukrainian auxiliary police began arresting Jews in their homes, while civilians participated in acts of violence against them in the streets. Captured Jews were dragged to the Jewish cemetery and the Łąckiego Street prison, where they were fatally shot out of the public eye. Some 2,000 people were murdered in approximately three days.