Liuboml

This page deals with a city in Ukraine. For the film named after this city, see Luboml (film).

Liuboml
City
Skyline of Liuboml Skyline of Liuboml
Flag of Liuboml Flag Official seal of Liuboml Seal
Liuboml
Liuboml
Coordinates:
Country	Ukraine
Oblast (province)	Volyn
Raion (district)	Liuboml
Government
• Mayor	Roman Jushchuk
Elevation	187 m (614 ft)
Population (2011)
• Total	10,129

Liuboml (Ukrainian and Russian: Лю́бомль, translit. Ljuboml’; Polish and German: Luboml) is a town located in the western part of Ukraine, in the Volyn Oblast (province); close to the border with Poland. It serves as the administrative center of the Lyubomlskyi Raion (district). Population: 10,246 (2013 est.)

Overview

Liuboml is situated 200 miles (320 km) southeast of Warsaw and 290 miles (470 km) 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

File:Синагога м. Любомль.jpg

Liuboml Synagogue before the Holocaust, historic photograh

Before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the ensuing Holocaust, Luboml was the capital of an urban county in the Wołyń Voivodeship (1921–39) 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.

Points of interest

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.

Image Gallery

• Костел Пресвятої Трійці в Любомлі 1.jpg

  Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Liuboml

• 

  Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, builder of Liuboml's Palace

• Ужвій Наталія Михайлівна.jpg

  Actress Natalija Užvij, native of Liuboml

• Luboml-stamps-PM-series-4.jpg

  1918 postage stamp from Liuboml with text in four languages

See also

• Luboml: My Heart Remembers, a documentary film that describes Jewish life in Liuboml between the two World Wars and mourns the town's Jewish population, lost during World War II.

References

• Luboml.org website in remembrance of the vanished Jewish community.