The transit prison № 25 was established in Lviv in the autumn of 1944 by the Soviet occupation administration, which replaced the Nazi one.
“Peresylka” (transit prison) was one of the largest prisons of its kind in the USSR. It was located behind the railway embankment, on the left side of Poltvyana Street (now it is V. Chornovol Avenue). During the years of German occupation, the “Lviv ghetto” was located in this part of the city.
On the territory of the transit prison, there were 21 barracks, technical rooms of the administration, and a hospital. The prison was surrounded by a 3-meter-high brick and wooden fence. Watchtowers were placed along the perimeter, the territory was guarded by escorts with dogs.
The existence of such a prison was due to the need of the penal authorities, including SMERSH and the NKVD. The main purpose of the transit prison was to collect and send prisoners “in stages” to the GULAG concentration camps.
Convicted prisoners from other prisons in Western Ukraine were taken to the “Lviv peresylka” (Lviv transit prison), where they stayed from week to year waiting for their stage. There is unconfirmed information about the stay of captured soldiers of Nazi Germany, the ROA, deserters of the Black Sea Fleet, as well as forcibly repatriated from Western Europe “citizens of the USSR”.
At the end of 1945, the prison went to the disposal of the Department of Correctional Labor Colonies (VVTK) of the NKVD, Ukrainian SSR, and from March 1946 to the Lviv Regional State Security Service.
You can learn more about the prison, as well as about the memories of those who were there, in a documentary published with the support of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
Translated from Ukrainian by
Anna Andruseiko
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