Jewish Lviv: 100 addresses

When Rachel Stevens and Jack Wright were taking a picture of a memorial plaque to Borys Orach during one of their first walks around Lviv, they didn’t know a thing about this person. In January 2018, they arrived in Lviv and started discovering the Jewish heritage of the city for themselves.

Soon after, they were shown the guide "Jewish Lviv: 100 Addresses," first published by the Hesed-Arieh Charitable Foundation in 2010. The map is an important part of the exploration of the Jewish past of the city. Following a lengthy period of silence and manipulation, the journey of discovery started thirty years ago due to the caring compassion of some Lviv citizens. Borys Orach, the author of the map, was one of them. He was a teacher and an activist of the Jewish community.

Thus an idea was born to add a new dimension to the map and use it to tell about the places of Borys Orach that have become part of the present-day Jewish Lviv.

In 2018 the Center published the digital map with the updated transliteration of street names, titles, and proper names in Latin characters, since during translation from the Ukrainian version they lost their original spelling. Some clarifications and additions about the dates and names were suggested by architectural historian Dr. Serhiy Kravtsov as well as by a student of Borys Orach at School No. 52. The text about Borys was prepared by Halyna Havrylina, also his student who helped to publish all of his books.

Hence, the work of this enthusiast received its second life due to the efforts of his students. The digital map was presented on May 24, 2018, as part of the exhibition by Rachel Stevens  "A Key to the City: Three Ways of Visualizing Jewish Heritage in Lviv" 

Borys Hryhorovych Orach is a well-known personality in Lviv. During the 90 years of his life he managed to accomplish a great deal. Some remember him as a prominent teacher of mathematics, others think of him as a connoisseur of the history of Galician Jews, while others recall that he was a veteran of sports or an active member of the Jewish community of Lviv.

Borys was born in the Polish town of Radom in 1921. He studied at cheder (primary school), and then graduated from a Jewish humanitarian gymnasium with excellence. In order to support his family, he gave private lessons from the age of 10. He was fond of music and literature. He loved violin, he knew many Jewish and Polish songs, composed poems and short stories. He mastered Hebrew in the gymnasium and in the Zionist youth organization, and later learned English and French on his own. He had a dream to compile an encyclopaedic reference book. He spent long hours in libraries to collect the necessary information.

In September 1939, the occupation of Poland started. Fleeing from the persecution of Jews, Borys Orach reached Soviet Lviv, and later went to Leningrad. There he entered the technological institute of light industry, but in the summer of 1941 he submitted an application with a request to send him to the front. He was wounded in the war. Borys was awarded with the Order of the Great Patriotic War II degree and with medals.

After the war, no family members were left in Radom, as his father, mother, and three brothers perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Thus Borys returned to Lviv. Here he graduated from the Pedagogical Institute and devoted the next 50 years of his life to teaching mathematics. He contributed to making the mathematics-focused Lobachevskyi School No. 52 well-known beyond Ukraine. Borys’s students received awards at various mathematics competitions. Borys described the history and contemporary reality of School No. 52 in his book Sowing Wisdom, Kindness, and the Eternal... (2002).

Borys Orach was head of the pedagogical city school for 30 years. There, he shared his experience with math teachers from all over Ukraine. His textbooks are valuable pedagogical contributions. These are To Raise Efficiency of Mathematics Teaching at Schools (2006), Key Parts of the School Mathematics Curriculum (2011).

Borys played sports until the last days of his life, even at the age of 90. He participated in international and national marathons, such as Lviv-Kyiv and The Road of Life in Leningrad.

In 1999, the President of Ukraine presented to Borys Orach the Order for Bravery, ІІІ degree.

Borys Orach was one of the first to actively work in reviving Jewish life in Lviv. He was the deputy head of the Sholem Aleichem Society of Jewish Culture, an editorial board member of the Shofar newspaper, an active member of B'nei B'rit Leopolis, a volunteer at the Hesed-Arieh All-Ukrainian Jewish Charitable Foundation, a member of the board of the chapter of Jewish war and labour veterans. He conducted guided tours of Jewish sites in Lviv and the region. He created a guidebook map "Jewish Lviv: 100 Addresses." For his 90th birthday, Borys Orach was awarded the honorable title "Merited Activist of the Jewish Council of Ukraine."

At the same time, he conducted his own research: he collected data in archives and libraries about the prominent Jews of Lviv and other places in Ukraine and Poland. His research resulted in a book Essays. Articles. Research (2013, compiled by Halyna Havrylina). The collection includes publications on the Holocaust, Judaica, the history of Lviv, stories about the personalities of Galician and Jewish culture, reflections of the author based on his own experience published in the period between 2001-2010 in the Shofar newspaper (published by the Sholem Aleichem Society), the newsletter of Hesed-Arieh, and the Snob magazine. This is an incomplete list of Borys Orach’s achievements.

In 2011 this wise and radiant personality passed away. However, his grateful students do not forget their Teacher. In 2014, to commemorate him, they installed a memorial plaque to Borys Orach on the façade of School No. 52. In 2017 a tree was planted in the Ruchama forest in Israel in honor of Borys Orach.

By Halyna Havrylina

Address numbering is given according to the original map. Interactive points with descriptions are placed over the scanned copy of the map. Hyperlinks to  Lviv Interactive encyclopedia in the descriptions offer additional information about certain places.

We encourage you to share your memories and materials about Borys Orach, which can be published on this map. Please contacts us:  lia@lvivcenter.org .

Digital map has been prepared by a joint effort of:

Jack Wright, Rachel Stevens, Galina Gavrilina, Olha Lidovska, Oleksandr Tyron, Yaroslava Drutsa, Olha Zarechnyuk, Taras Nazaruk, Sofia Kerepko.

Pictures come from collections of Halyna Havrylina, Serhiy Kravtsov, Vadym Tader, Rachel Stevens, Lviv Interactive project.

Translations by Svitlana Brehman. Proof-reading by Areta Kovalsky.

This map was presented as a part of an exhibition by Rachel Stevens  "A Key to the City: Three Ways of Visualizing Jewish Heritage in Lviv"  on May 24th, 2018.

1. Борис Орач, Єврейський Львів. 100 адрес (Львів—Хесед—Ар'є: 2010)
2. Борис Орач, Очерки, статьи, исследования (Львів: 2013)
3. Majer Bałaban, Dzielnica żydowska, jej dzieje i zabytki (Lwów: 1909).
4. Sergey Kravtsov, “Architecture of ‘New Synagogues’ in Central—Eastern Europe,” in Reform Judaism and Architecture, ed. by Andreas Brämer, Mirko Przystawik, and Harmen H. Thies, publications of the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture in Europe, vol. 9 (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2016), 47–78.
5. Sergey Kravtsov, “Juan Bautista Villalpando and Sacred Architecture in the Seventeenth century,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians3 (2005): 312–339.
6. Jakub Schall, Przewodnik po zabytkach żydowskich miasta Lwowa i historia Żydów lwowskich w zarysie (Lviv, 1935), 35.
7. Галина Глембоцкая, Художники—евреи Львова: Жизнь, творчество, судьба (Львов, 2015), 28—30.
8. Jurij Biriulow, Lwów: Przewodnik ilustrowany (Lviv, 2001), 64.
9. Almanach żydowski wydany przez Hermana Stachla (Lviv, 1937), 537—538.
10. Nathan Michael Gelber, ed., Entsikopedyah shel galuyot, vol. 4, Lvov (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1956)
11. Alicja (Dr. Paulina Hausman): correspondence with Adolf — Abraham Berman  Source 
12. Mirosław Łapot, Z dziejów opieki nad żydowskim dzieckiem sierocym we Lwowie (1772—1939) (Gliwice, 2011)  Source 
13. Tarik C. Amar, “A Disturbed Silence: Discourse on the Holocaust in the Soviet West as an Anti—Site of Memory,” in "The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses" (Pittsburgh, 2014): 158—183, footnote 21
14. Dieter Pohl, Nazionalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941—1944. Organisation und Durchfürung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens, 1996, 338.
15. Waitman W. Beorn,  The Janowska Camp at the Center of the Holocaust 

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