On June 27, 2012, the Lviv Museum of the History of Religion presented the exhibition “Those Who Saved the World”, which tells the story of the rescue of Jews by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church during the Second World War.

The organizers of this action were the Sheptytskyi brothers - Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church Andrei and Archimandrite Klymentii.

The first part of the exposition is devoted to the “images of the vanished world” - Galician Jews and their unique culture, which was destroyed during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation. Divided into themes such as “History”, “Religion”, and “Family”, this section reveals various aspects of the life of Jews in pre-war Lviv. It includes exhibits of holograms featuring ritual Jewish objects that once belonged to synagogues that no longer exist and communities that were exterminated by the Nazis.

A separate section is dedicated to European politicians and philosophers who contributed to the emergence of an anti-Semitic component in Nazi ideology.

The second part of the exhibition focuses on the rescue efforts in which monks, nuns, priests, and parishioners of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church actively participated. They were risking their own lives to save Jews, driven by Christian principles of love and the ideology of universal human unity.

In this section of the exhibition, the establishment of the German “new order” under Nazi occupation is explained. It also features photographs of those who didn’t obey, including priests, monks, nuns, and the “Righteous Among the Nations”, who saved Jews. The exhibition includes eyewitness accounts from individuals such as Rabbi David Kahane, Rabbi Ezekiel Levin's son Kurt, Lily Stern, Adam Rotfeld, and their testimonies.

A separate section is dedicated to Blessed Fr. Omelian Kovch, who displayed great courage during the Second World War by preaching love for people of all nationalities and saving Jews from extermination. He also continued to perform priestly duties while imprisoned in the Majdanek concentration camp, where he ultimately lost his life.

The Lviv Museum of the History of Religion extends sincere gratitude to the Lviv Historical Museum, the Center for the Urban History of Central-Eastern Europe, the Hesed-Arieh Foundation, Sevastiian Dmytrukh (the head of the Sacred Art Commission of the Lviv Archdiocese of the UGCC), Fr. Ihor Yatsiv (head of the information department of the UGCC), Ivan Hrechko (Head of the Club of Greek-Catholic Intelligentsia), Ihor Kotlobulatov, Larysa Kadatska, and Volodymyr Rumiantsev for providing the materials used in the exhibition.

The exhibition is located at the address: 36 Staroievreiska Str.