COURAGE

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The National Museum-Memorial to the Victims of Occupation “Prison on Lonskogo Street” is located in Lviv, inside a prison where the punitive organs of three occupying powers operated: Polish, Soviet and Nazi. The building was used by regional state security services (SBU) as a prison until 1996, when the death of an inmate precipitated its closing. After the local community caught wind of a plan to allow developers to build on the site in 2006, activists mobilized to transform the prison into a site commemorating the thousands of prisoners executed by the NKVD in 1941 as the Red Army fled from advancing Nazi forces, and those incarcerated here in the decades that followed. It is the first museum-memorial of its kind in Ukraine.

This structure was built for the Austro-Hungarian gendarme in 1889-1890 based on a neo-renaissance design by the architect Józef Kajetan Janowski. Under Polish rule in 1918-1920, the building was used as a prison, in particular a place to detain members of anti-government and anti-state organizations, like the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) or the Communist Party of Western Ukraine. Unofficially, the prison was used for holding political prisoners. In 1935, the building was transferred to the interrogatory wing of the Polish police and its rooms used as isolation cells. In 1939-1941, the Soviets used this as a prison with a capacity for 1,500 inmates after their takeover and occupation of eastern Galicia. The neighboring building housed the offices of the local NKVD. In 1941-1944, the Gestapo used this facility as a prison and place of interrogation, as well as the headquarters for the Einsatzgruppen. Under their supervision, the courtyard was paved with Jewish headstones from nearby cemeteries. Polish academic Kazimir Bartel was imprisoned here for a long time. From 1944 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the building was used by various iterations of the Soviet state security services (NKDV, MGB, and KGB). After independence, the building was used for a time by the regional successor organizations, until community activists and NGOS lobbied successfully for its transformation into a museum memorial in 2009.

The Peace Institute – Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies – is a private, independent, non-profit research institution founded in 1991 by individuals who believed in peaceful conflict resolution, equality and respect for human rights standards. The Institute uses scientific research and advocacy activities aimed at creating and an preserving open society capable of critical thought and based on the principles of equality, responsibility, solidarity, human rights and the rule of law.

The Institute develops interdisciplinary research, educational and awareness-raising activities in the areas of social science, humanities, anthropology and law, in five thematic fields: human rights and minorities, politics, media, gender and cultural policies. It acts as an ally of vulnerable groups and acts against discrimination in partnership with them. It is a visible research and civil society stakeholder in Slovenia, the region and on the international level and a leading resource in the fields of its operation. It acts in partnership with other similar stakeholders (institutes, universities, non-governmental organisations) as well as with residents on the local, regional and international level.

(Source: http://www.mirovni-institut.si/o-mirovnem-institutu/)

The NKVD (Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del) was a ministry of the Soviet government responsible for security and law enforcement. Set up in 1917, the NKVD underwent numerous organizational and functional changes. Sometimes it included the secret political police, foreign intelligence, as well as the regular police force, the border guards, and the prison system. At other times, it was divided into two separate agencies, one responsible for state security and the other for law enforcement. These changes were due to political rather than administrative factors. The NKVD's notoriety as an instrument of terror belongs to the periods when the state security apparatus came under its jurisdiction (July 1934 to April 1943, except for February–July 1941).