Liuboml


Liuboml is a town located in the western part of Ukraine, in the Volyn Oblast ; close to the border with Poland. It serves as the administrative center of the Lyubomlskyi Raion. Population:

Overview

Liuboml is situated southeast of Warsaw and west of Kiev, in a historic region known as Volhynia; not far from the border with Belarus to the north, and Poland to the west. Because of its strategic location at the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe, Liuboml had a long history of changing rule, dating back to the 11th century. The territory of Volhynia first belonged to Kievan Rus', then to the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire, interwar Poland, the USSR, and finally to sovereign Ukraine.

20th century

Before the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland in September 1939 and the ensuing Holocaust, Luboml was the capital of an urban county in the Wołyń Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic with the highest percentage of Jews anywhere in the country by 1931, exceeding 94% of the total population of over 3,300 people.
In Yiddish, the town was called Libivne. During World War II, Liuboml was occupied twice. It remained under the German occupation from 25 June 1941 until 19 July 1944 in the years following the anti-Soviet Operation Barbarossa. It was administered as a part of the Nazi German Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The entire Jewish community of Liuboml was annihilated in a mass shooting action conducted in 1942 on the outskirts of town in the deadliest phase of the Holocaust. The town's Jews along with refugees from western Poland estimated at around 4,500 people, were taken by the German Einsatzgruppen aided by the local Ukrainian collaborators and Auxiliary Police to nearby pits and shot. There were 51 known survivors from the virtually eradicated town. Liuboml was repopulated during the postwar repatriations.

Historical and Cultural Heritage Monuments

The town's landmarks include St. George's Church, built in the 16th century in place of a 13th-century Orthodox church which previously occupied the site, and the Trinity Church, which goes back to 1412, but was subsequently rebuilt, with a belfry from 1640. Prior to Second World War, the grand synagogue was a dominant landmark as well, before its meticulous destruction.

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