Naked and humiliated woman cries out in rag1941

Naked and humiliated woman cries out in rage 1941

Anticipated German invasion included May 1941 instructions for ethnic cleansing to its planned militia units: “At a time of chaos and confusion it is permissible to liquidate undesirable Polish, Russian, and Jewish activists, especially supporters". "Russians, Poles, Jews" were hostile to the Ukrainian nation and were to be "destroyed in battle".

supported Communism and the Soviet Union, a perception shaped by prevalent antisemitism among Ukrainian and Polish communities, who had little meaningful interaction with Jewish neighbours and refugees. Kiebuzinski and Motyl also emphasise the role of Nazi propaganda in instigating the violence.

Jeffrey Kopstein shows that the Germans eagerly facilitated anti-Jewish violence by locals, but that such violence occurred in places where they were not present, so their presence in Lvov facilitated it and made it more brutal, but was not the sufficient or necessary cause. He notes that resentment towards Soviet occupation was clearly a factor, but that known ethnic Ukrainian Soviet collaborators were spared. The role of Ukrainian nationalists was therefore significant, but "any account [of the pogroms] as primarily an OUN operation misses something important. The OUN was a small organization spread thinly on the ground. 

They tried to recruit locals, but adherence was spotty and opportunistic... excessive focus on their role risks overlooking an essential feature...: the participation of broad segments of the Ukrainian population in the pogrom's mass, carnivalesque character." Kopstein also emphasises the role of Zionism as a powerful current among Lvov Jews (in contrast to parts of western Ukraine where Zionist support was low or Communist support was high, which tended to have fewer pogroms) that meant it was seen as a threat by both Polish and Ukrainian nationalists.