Wojna jako wyzwanie destrukcyjne: przekształcenia wschodniogalicyjskich muzeów w latach II wojny światowej
War as a Destructive Challenge: Transformations of Eastern Galician Museums during World War II

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the destructive changes experienced by museal institutions in the Lwów, Tarnopol, and Stanisławów voivodeships of the Second Polish Republic during the Soviet and German occupation in the years of World War II. By the end of the interwar period, the museum movement in Eastern Galicia had reached a high level of development and was characterized by institutional diversity and a variety of collections. Serious organizational changes occurred in museums in 1940, when Soviet party functionaries drastically reduced the number of institutions, while private, church, and community museums were eliminated. During the German occupation, the museums of Lwów, Tarnopol, Stanisławów, Kolomyia, Sambor, and Sokal were closed to the public, and the most valuable collections were taken away for office decoration and removed to the Third Reich. Both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis plundered such museum artifacts as the archaeological Golden Mykhalkiv Treasures from Podillia (taken to Moscow), Albrecht Dürer and other Polish and foreign masters’ drawings (taken to Berlin), as well as thousands of other museum exhibits that were taken away. In the spring of 1944, the Germans permitted evacuation of Polish national museum artifacts from Lviv museums, as well as Ukrainian archaeological exhibits. The negative balance of wartime fates of Eastern Galician museums is marked by the disseverance of pre-war collections and the loss of their integrity.

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