Yavoriv (Ukrainian: Яворів, IPA:[ˈjɑworiu̯]; Polish: Jaworów; Yiddish: יאַוואָראָוו, romanized: Yavorov; German: Jaworiw) is a city in Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine. It is situated about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the Polish border. It serves as the administrative centre of Yavoriv Raion and is situated approximately 50 kilometres (31 miles) west of the oblast capital, Lviv. Yavoriv hosts the administration of Yavoriv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine.[1] Its population is approximately 12,785 (2022 estimate).[2]
Until the First Partition of Poland, Jaworów was an important center of commerce, located along main merchant route from Jarosław to Lwów. In 1772 it was annexed by the Habsburg Empire, and included within newly formed Austrian Galicia, where it remained until late 1918. In Galicia, it was the seat of a county, with the population of almost 11,000 (Poles, Jews, Ukrainians and Czechs).
In the immediate post-World War I period, the area of Jaworów witnessed fights of the Polish-Ukrainian War. After the war, the town became part of the Second Polish Republic, where it remained until the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, in September 1939. The Jews of the village were merchants or artisans. There was a synagogue.
During the invasion of Poland, on 14-16 September 1939, Poles defeated invading Germans in the Battle of Jaworów. Despite the victory, the town soon fell to the Soviets, and was under Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941, and then under German occupation until 1944.
In 1944 the town was re-occupied by the Soviets, and in 1945 it was eventually annexed from Poland by the Soviet Union.
After the war, the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission reported that more than 4900 people, most of them Jews, had been killed in Yavoriv, in addition to those sent to Bełżec. Only about 20 of the town's Jews were thought to have survived.[8]
On 27 May 1947 the UPA blew up the statue of Lenin.[9]
In the decades between the 1960s and 1990s the town was a sulphurmining centre;[10] excavation pits and degenerated lands remain between Yavoriv and Novoiavorivsk.[10]
On 13 March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russians bombedthe military base in Yavoriv. A Russian defence military spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, claimed the attack killed up to 180 foreign mercenaries.[11] The Ukrainian side claimed there were at least 35 dead and 134 injured.[12][13][14] The attack was heard in neighbouring Poland.[15]
^Megargee, Geoffrey (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. p. Volume II 784-686. ISBN978-0-253-35599-7.
^Grzegorz Motyka (2006), Ukraińska partyzantka 1942-1960 (in Polish), Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, p. 518, ISBN83-88490-58-3, OCLC838973434
^ abGrzegorz Rąkowski (2007), Ziemia Lwowska. Przewodnik po Ukrainie Zachodniej. Część III (in Polish), Pruszków: Rewasz, p. 506-511, ISBN978-83-89188-66-3, OCLC189428719