in the city, all celebrating the Polish forces who fought against the Ukrainians in 1918, became frequent, and in the 1930s a vast memorial monument and burial ground of Polish soldiers from that conflict was built in the city's Lychakiv Cemetery. The Polish government fostered the idea of Lviv as an eastern Polish outpost standing strong against eastern "hordes."
World War II and Soviet occupation
Further information: Battle of Lw�w (1939)
Following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and by 14 September Lviv was completely encircled by German units. Subsequently the Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The Soviet Union annexed the eastern part of Second Polish Republic including the city of Lviv which capitulated to the Red Army on 22 September 1939.
The city (named Lvov in Russian) became the capital of the newly formed Lviv Oblast. The Soviets opened many Ukrainian-language schools that had been closed by the Polish government and Ukrainian was reintroduced in the University of Lviv (where the Polish government had banished it during the interwar years), which became thoroughly Ukrainized and renamed after Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko.
The Soviets also started repressions against local Poles and Ukrainians deporting many of the citizens. Waves of deportations started with the Poles followed by the Jews who had refused Soviet passports and then the Ukrainian nationalists.
German occupation
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and several of its allies invaded the USSR. In the initial stage of Operation Barbarossa (late June 1941) Lviv was taken by the Germans. The evacuating Soviets killed most of the prison population. Wehrmacht forces arriving in the city discovered evidence of the Soviet mass murders committed by the NKVD and NKGB. Ukrainian nationalists, organized as a militia, and the civilian population were allowed to take revenge on the "Jews and
