Metadata: Lwów Municipal Starostwo, Lwów
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Lviv Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний Архів Львівської області
- Postal address:
- ul. Pidvalna 13, 79008, L’viv
- Phone number:
- +38 (032) 235-47-22
- Email:
- archive_lviv@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 110
- Title:
- Lwów Municipal Starostwo, Lwów
- Title (official language):
- Львiвське гродське староство, м. Львiв
- Creator/accumulator:
- Lwów Municipal Starostwo
- Date(s):
- 1928/1939
- Language:
- Polish
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 5,901 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Materials in this fonds that pertain to the history of Jews in this region include (nos. 1, 3-4) documents on the monitoring of the public activities of the Jewish population of Lwów, including police situation reports and analytical memoranda based thereon and reports of the starostwo itself on the sociopolitical situation in Lwów (1929-38); memoranda of the municipal starosta to the Lwów Voivodeship Administration on the existence in Lwów of Jewish public and political organisations and their members (1929-30); police reports on an Eastern Małopolska Regional Palestine Conference organised by Keren Hayesod and attended by Naḥum Sokolow, chairman of the World Zionist Organisation (1930) and on the Third Congress of Jewish Student Youth in Lwów in 1930; statistics on the ethnic makeup of students of Lwów universities (1931-32); an order of the municipal starostwo prohibiting the installation of sukkahs in courtyards and on balconies during the holiday of Sukkoth (1938); etc.
The fonds also contains information on the activities of the Jewish religious community of Lwów in the 1920s-30s, as reflected in a special report on this subject prepared for an emergency conference (meeting) of starostas of the Lwów region (November 1932); in reports and copies of minutes of the community’s board and council, lists of newly elected members of its leadership, and in police reports, including information on inter-Orthodox tensions on the one hand and tensions between Orthodox and Zionists on the other during the election of Dr. Aron Levin, who was a deputy of the Sejm, as a candidate for the office of rabbi of Lwów (1931-32).
The fonds contains a significant number of observational reports by the municipal starostwo’s security department on the activities of Jewish political parties, public-political organisations, business unions and religious, charitable, artistic, sports, and cultural-educational societies. These organisations include: Agudas Yisrael (1929-33), the Bund (1919-28), Po’ale Tsiyon (1919-38), Hitahdut (1928-36), the Jewish People’s Party (Di yidishe folkspartey) (1929-33), the Executive Committee of the Regional Organisation of Zionists of Eastern Małopolska (1929-33), the Area Committee of Zionist-Revisionists in Lwów(1930-32), Avoda (1932), Agroid (1934-35), Bar-Kokhba (1933−39), Galilea (1931-38), Hehaluts-Pioner (1919-39), Hashomer Hatsair (1925-38), Hatikva (1924-38), Hanoar Haivri Akiva (1938), the Main Council of Jewish Business Organisations (1932-37), Gmilus Hesed (1927-39), Jewish Heart (1928-39), Ezras Reyim (1935-39), Zikhron Itskhok (1920-36), Keren Hayesod (1921-33), the Lwów branch of the all-Polish Society of Jewish Veterans of the Struggle for Polish Independence (1934-39), the Lwów branch of the all-Polish Union of Jewish Craftsmen (1938-39), the Palestine Bureau in Lwów (1932-33), the Albert Einstein Jewish People’s University (1930-38), Tarbut (1930-39), Maccabi (1923-35), the Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population (TOZ) (1936-39), Poalei Agudas Israel (1929-38), and Yad Charutzim (1929-39). These files typically include applications by initiative groups and committees for the establishment of the societies and organisations in question, their charters, correspondence, police reports on upcoming congresses and conferences, etc.
The fonds further includes documents containing information on a ceremonial meeting of Naḥum Sokolow with Jewish public figures of Lwów in the community’s assembly hall, with its vice-president, the banker and public figure Wiktor Chajes, in attendance (1930); on the involvement of Jewish political parties in parliamentary elections of 1930; on a lecture given in Lwów by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky titled “England, the Arabs, and Us,” in which Jabotinsky sharply criticised the White Paper of the British government (1930); on the Third Congress of Jewish Students of Lwów (1930); on a Lwów tour by the Ararat Jewish Chamber Theatre from Łódź (1930), and Lwów performances of the “Соlosseum” Jewish Theatre of Isidor Merkel (1931); on efforts by the Union of Jewish Students from Eastern Małopolska Studying Abroad to collect information on opportunities for Jews to enrol at European universities, and on opportunities for financial aid (1932); on Lwów Jews taking part in the economic boycott of Germany after 1933; on a Lwów conference of delegates of Busliya Hakhshara groups held by the central committee of the Hehaluts-Pioner organisation Hakhshar-Busliyaon on 24 December 1934.
Brief registration data on Jewish organisations is given in the general registration log of societies and organisations; here are mentioned, among other organisations, the Circle of Lovers of Jewish Art in Lwów, the Kinor Jewish Youth Choir, the Jewish Music Society in Lwów, the Jacob Gordin Jewish Workers’ Stage in Lwów (1935), and others.
A number of documents in the fonds pertain to the registration and distribution of Jewish periodicals in Lwów, among them Arbeter Shtime (1932), Beitar (1933-34), Hamodia (1931), Dos lebn (1934), Di frayeshtime (1931), Di tsayt (1932), Rolnik żydowski (1933-39), Trybuna żydowska (1929), Trybuna sionistyczna (1929), and Folk un Arbet (1930-36). There is also information on the Lwów District Court’s ruling that certain issues of these publications be banned and confiscated, as well as on analogous orders regarding certain books and pamphlets, including: Der Zionizmzuzeyr 17tn kongress (1931), The Political Program and Charter of the All-Jewish Party of Labour (Program polityczny i statut Ogólnożydowskiej Partii Pracy, 1933) and an antisemitic work titled Christianity, Communism, and Jewry (1933).
There is also information regarding the dramatic events associated with anti-Jewish disturbances among young student Polish chauvinists in Lwów (1929, 1930, 1932-33), including the storming of the premises of the Jewish Classical Gymnasium, beatings of Jewish students and rallies featuring antisemitic appeals (calling for restrictions on and/or the complete barring of Jewish admissions to universities, Jews’ exclusion from the economic and sociopolitical life of Poland, etc.). There is also information on protests organised by foreign Jewish organisations and appeals (in connection with the pogroms against Jews) of Polish public organisations (1932); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Lwów Municipal Starostwo was established in 1928 by analogy with the county starostwa as an organ of state administration in the territory of Lwów, in this capacity assuming several of the functions of the former Police Directorate (see the description of f. 271). In its activities, the Lwów Municipal Starostwo (Starostwo Grodzkie Lwowskie) was subordinate to the Lwów Voivodeship Administration (see the description of f. 1) and was headed by the municipal starosta, who was appointed by the minister of the interior of Poland. One of the municipal starostwo’s main structural divisions was its department of security and public order, which monitored the activities of public and political parties and organisations, as well as press agencies, including Jewish ones. It was abolished in September 1939.
- Access points: locations:
- Lwów
- Access points: persons/families:
- Chajes, Wiktor
- Levin, Aron
- Sokolow, Naḥum
- Subject terms:
- Aid and relief
- Aid and relief--Philanthropy and charity
- Antisemitism
- Antisemitism--Antisemitic publications
- Art
- Bund movement
- Censorship
- Education
- Education--Students
- Health and medical matters
- Hebrew periodicals
- Jewish community
- Jewish holidays
- Jewish political activity
- Jewish press
- Law enforcement
- Law enforcement--Police
- Music
- Orthodox Judaism
- Pogroms
- Sports
- Statistics
- Theatre
- War veterans
- Yiddish periodicals
- Zionism
- Zionism--Revisionist Zionism
- Zionism--Zionist organisations and parties
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises five series. The first four are organised in accordance with the structure of the Lwów Municipal Starostwo itself and within particular inventories, according to the thematic-chronological principle (albeit with occasional deviations from it). Several files kept among the materials of the Lwów Municipal Starostwo were created before its establishment by the Police Directorate in Lwów.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
