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City of Lions
Portrait of a City in Two Acts: Lviv, Then and Now
Lviv, Lwów, Lvov, Lemberg. Known by a variety of names, the City of Lions is now in western Ukraine. Situated in different countries during its history, it is a city located along the fault-lines of Europe's history.
City of Lions presents two essays, written more than half a century apart - but united by one city.
Józef Wittlin's sensual and lyrical paean to his Lwów, written in exile, is a deep cry of love and pain for his city, most of whose familiar faces have fled or been killed.
Philippe Sands' finely honed exploration of what has been lost and what remains interweaves a lawyer's love of evidence with the emotional heft of a descendant of Lviv.
With an illuminating preface by Eva Hoffman and stunning new photographs by Diana Matar, City of Lions is a powerful and melancholy evocation of central Europe in the twentieth century, with a special resonance for today's troubled continent.
Józef Wittlin (b.1896) was a major Polish poet, novelist (Salt of the Earth won him a nomination for the Nobel prize), essayist and translator. He studied in Vienna, where he met Joseph Roth and Rainer Maria Rilke, and he served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War. With the outbreak of WWII, Wittlin was evacuated to New York, where he died in 1976.
Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at University College London. Lviv is the heart of his latest book, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.
Diana Matar is a photographer whose work investigates issues of history, memory and state sponsored violence. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, she has won many prizes and her work has been exhibited in institutions around the world.
161 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1946
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February 11, 2024
19th book of 2024.
One of my goals/pipe-dreams in life has always been to visit all 44 countries in Europe before I die. Often, war makes this impossible. Right now, it's hard to imagine ever visiting Ukraine or Russia as a tourist. I didn't necessarily read this book because of what's happening in the world right now (I know that sounds a strange thing to say), but I actually read it because I'm an essay lover and I was interested by the 'then and now' aspect of this project, irrespective of the city in question.
The first essay was published in 1946, immediately post-war, by Wittlin. Phillipe Sands is a fairly well-known writer thanks to his well-received book East West Street, which I'm still yet to read. He is writing from a 2016 present in his own essay. Both of them are looking at Lviv, Lwów, Lvov, Lemberg, or, the City of Lions. Sands said it well in his essay:
In this case, the 'black-and-white city' is a reference to the lovely photographs included throughout this book, that look as if they were taken by Sebald.
Wittlin writes with nostalgia for Lviv. At other times, I felt alienated by him, having never set foot in the city, his musings were lost on me. I was reminded of the things you see on the Internet about how once you've been to one European city 'you've been to them all': I baulk at this way of thinking. I've ever seen crudely drawn maps of 'any' European city: a cathedral, a market, a train station, etc.; the difference between cities are not the buildings but the feeling. Wandering around Paris late at night is in no way the same as wandering around Copenhagen at night. Wittlin writes from exile, 'Where are you now, park benches of Lwów? Are you blackened with age and rain, coarse and cracked like the bark of medieval olive trees?' I believe some of the world's best literature was written from exile.
Sands explores what Wittlin wrote, and why, but also goes on his own personal journey about his grandfather, who was born in Lviv. Then he writes about the conflicts that have shaped the city, of course, without knowing what is still to come. Interestingly, both the word 'genocide' and the phrase 'crimes against humanity' were born in Lviv.
One of my goals/pipe-dreams in life has always been to visit all 44 countries in Europe before I die. Often, war makes this impossible. Right now, it's hard to imagine ever visiting Ukraine or Russia as a tourist. I didn't necessarily read this book because of what's happening in the world right now (I know that sounds a strange thing to say), but I actually read it because I'm an essay lover and I was interested by the 'then and now' aspect of this project, irrespective of the city in question.
The first essay was published in 1946, immediately post-war, by Wittlin. Phillipe Sands is a fairly well-known writer thanks to his well-received book East West Street, which I'm still yet to read. He is writing from a 2016 present in his own essay. Both of them are looking at Lviv, Lwów, Lvov, Lemberg, or, the City of Lions. Sands said it well in his essay:
I came to learn that the best way to wander this black-and-white city—if you really want a sense of history—is to do it with four maps in your pockets: pre-war Austro-Hungarian, interwar Polish, wartime German and modern Ukrainian.
In this case, the 'black-and-white city' is a reference to the lovely photographs included throughout this book, that look as if they were taken by Sebald.
Wittlin writes with nostalgia for Lviv. At other times, I felt alienated by him, having never set foot in the city, his musings were lost on me. I was reminded of the things you see on the Internet about how once you've been to one European city 'you've been to them all': I baulk at this way of thinking. I've ever seen crudely drawn maps of 'any' European city: a cathedral, a market, a train station, etc.; the difference between cities are not the buildings but the feeling. Wandering around Paris late at night is in no way the same as wandering around Copenhagen at night. Wittlin writes from exile, 'Where are you now, park benches of Lwów? Are you blackened with age and rain, coarse and cracked like the bark of medieval olive trees?' I believe some of the world's best literature was written from exile.
Sands explores what Wittlin wrote, and why, but also goes on his own personal journey about his grandfather, who was born in Lviv. Then he writes about the conflicts that have shaped the city, of course, without knowing what is still to come. Interestingly, both the word 'genocide' and the phrase 'crimes against humanity' were born in Lviv.
December 6, 2016
'City of Lions' by Jósef Wittlin and Philippe Sands
3 stars/ 6 out of 10
The preface to the book by Eva Hoffman is very interesting, and there are some excellent photographs by Diana Matar, and also by Iryna and Ihor Kotlobulatov. Jósef Wittlin's essay (originally entitled 'My Lwów') is translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
The book consists of 2 essays, written nearly 70 years apart, about the city of Lviv, as it is now known.
Jósef Wittlin's 1946 essay looks back with nostalgia at the city (then named Lwów) where he grew up, and which he left in 1922. It also looks at the fate of the Jews who lived there during the Second World War.
Philippe Sands' essay (entitled 'My Lviv') looks at the current situation in the city, and also traces the lives and fates of his ancestors who were living there during the Second World War. He also comments on, and adds to, Wittlin's account of life in the city.
I found the book interesting, and it gave me an insight into the varied history of this city.
Thank you to Pushkin Press and to NetGalley for an ARC.
February 7, 2017
ARC review
In the first of these two essays on Lwów [Lvov, Lviv, Lemberg...] poet Józef Wittlin, writing in exile in 1946, creates something reminiscent of lovely yet half-forgotten writings on London, such as friends may have happened on in a second-hand bookshop. There is that same joy and abundance and grubbiness and motley shambolic nature, with an old-world gentility that wouldn't be found in a contemporary essay (and well done to translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones for reproducing such charming mustiness), alongside the distinctively Mitteleuropean (the local councillor and Faustian "alchemist" was a delightful echo of Rudolf II's Prague), sometimes of a specifically local Lwówian and thereby unfamiliarly exotic type. But it is shot through with moments of reeling shock: just smiling at an anecdote about a couple of his old professors, but, oh, they are both dead, murdered by Nazis. It is a different way of hearing about the war, because we are hearing not much about war, about what went before, a lively, multicultural and highly cultured place, about what was lost, but in paragraphs that can make one forget it was... it may spark the wish to step back into it, and the feeling that it is nearly possible, as in Midnight in Paris; this is interspersed with short moments of dislocation and disbelief at its recent destruction. Which perhaps just now, when many people in Britain and the US are experiencing a sense of unreality about political events, and fearing where they may lead, feels especially moving and frightening and hopefully not prescient.
I found myself especially moved and engaged by this little book, more than I expected, and welled up more than once; I would caution friends not to be excessively swayed by my 5 stars: not only did I read it straight after Bruno Schulz, but at time of reading was slightly ill and also hormonal; perhaps it would have got only 4 at another time.
The paragraphs which are effectively paeans to the author's mates - (a regrettable number of whom seem to have died in their youth of consumption, archetypal poets of the pre-antibiotic age), young turks who used to wonder if they might have streets named after them like writers past - may be less engaging to some readers, but if you, like me, also tend to get sentimental about certain of your friends' talents, you may at least understand where he is coming from.
And never far from my mind whilst reading, and strengthening my appetite for detail, was the realisation that this city was the capital of the territory where my grandparents were born, although to my knowledge neither went there. It had ceased to be a capital by the end of the First World War, but something of that sense of centre-ness must have lingered in the popular imagination. In the last few years I've gradually grown a book-fed sense of the cultural shape of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Galicia in particular: a country with a different shape from those now present. The places within it where the cool and cultured people were, and where, if you'd been a youngster with sights on that life, you'd have wanted to go: Vienna, Prague, Kraków; but the other, Lwów, was a mystery to me, still somehow behind the iron curtain that existed in my own childhood.
There is a risk in writing about large diverse cities that they sound essentially similar: carnivalesque and irreverent being - although the translation of Wittlin never uses those exact words - two commonalities between 'My Lwów' and Peter Ackroyd's (and others') idea of London. Wittlin had also spent time in several different major cities, including Vienna, Warsaw, Nice, Paris, and New York, so I'm going to take his word for it that there was something particularly outstanding about the cross-class mixing and the nose-thumbing at pomp and pretension in Lwów. With my own island-bound comparison, I'd say that the defining characteristic of Manchester is a cheeky, outspoken confidence; but, you might say, every city has that type, look at the traditional Cockney barrow boy. Etc. I would say that a) I see the defining characteristic of modern London as polymathy: everyone is interested in so many things, or has fingers in so many pies, the average general knowledge is higher, all sorts of people have heard of stuff when their average counterparts elsewhere wouldn't have, and b) There is such sheer abundance of that cheeky loudness in Manchester, among people who elsewhere would be more restrained, and - though perhaps I bring current economics and pop culture into it too much - there is a general sense of its being built on solid foundations: it is confidence inflated, rather than arrogance covering despair or desperation, unlike the somewhat similar insolence of Glasgow or Liverpool. (And I shan't be surprised if GR friends from some of these places furrow their brows.) All this is essentially subjective, but it's based on knowing other places well enough to compare, it's not just blind love of one town, and I trust that is Wittlin's game too.
I suspect that the second of the two main essayists in this book, eminent human rights lawyer and UCL academic Philippe Sands, was the driving force behind the project: in 'My Lviv' he describes struggling to read a Spanish translation of Wittlin with the aid of a friend during one of his visits to the city, and he's undoubtedly well placed enough to have set the wheels turning. Sands' piece is in some ways simply one of thousands about descendants of WWII refugees returning to look at their ancestral homelands, but he had been visiting the city annually for six years by the time he wrote the essay, so has a deeper acquaintance with the place than many similar examples - and it contains the unusual dimension that two of the most signficant individuals in his own field of work studied in the city within a few years of one another: the lawyers who originated the terms "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" (it being a city where no shortage of these were perpetrated). Sands elaborates on this in his own book East West Street, published last year, which contains more detail on both legal history and family memoir; City of Lions appears to be a sort of companion volume.
The reader has probably also, before reading Sands' essay, consumed the whole of Wittlin's, and if they are moved by his more poetic writing and sense of the city's past, then Sands only adds to one's idea of the place, and brings some of Wittlin's nostalgia down to earth as he points out discrimination that existed in those times of pre-1939 multiculturalism. Even if Sands' sign off of "Hampstead, London 2016" hints how comfortably far removed he is from such a world ( I see how he is mirroring Wittlin's of "Riverside, New York, 1946", but I think the prestige of the suburb detracts from the message, and polarises unnecessarily.) As with the sections in Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible about architectural preservation in Moscow, there is a sense that contemporary Lviv's left-leaning intelligentsia, among whom Sands has made friends, are a somewhat embattled and tiny minority, especially those prepared to speak out, which does, as he acknowledges, make one worry a little for the future in other countries at this time.
Among the obvious drawbacks for some readers will be the large number of footnotes to Wittlin's essay - but they are, at least, thorough: I'm not sure there's anything or anyone an English speaker would wonder about that isn't briefly explained. If, however, you like getting the full sense of a place from a local's perspective without having everything sifted and anglicised, they are a joy.
All of the photographs in my e-ARC were black and white. Obviously can't be helped with the older ones - which I didn't think were well-placed in the book: the pictures of shabby buildings kept deflating the knowingly-created idyll of Wittlin's remembered Lwów; it's a shame they didn't have any of festivals, parks, mayors and the like - but it would be great if the recent ones were in colour, so they do not detract from the vitality of the book.
I'd have no hesitation in recommending City of Lions to those with connections to the region, and it is worth a look, too, for those interested in psychogeographies and histories of cities or Central Europe. It is a tiny book that looks to be under 150 pages in print, about twenty of those pictures.
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher, Pushkin Press, for this free advance review copy
In the first of these two essays on Lwów [Lvov, Lviv, Lemberg...] poet Józef Wittlin, writing in exile in 1946, creates something reminiscent of lovely yet half-forgotten writings on London, such as friends may have happened on in a second-hand bookshop. There is that same joy and abundance and grubbiness and motley shambolic nature, with an old-world gentility that wouldn't be found in a contemporary essay (and well done to translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones for reproducing such charming mustiness), alongside the distinctively Mitteleuropean (the local councillor and Faustian "alchemist" was a delightful echo of Rudolf II's Prague), sometimes of a specifically local Lwówian and thereby unfamiliarly exotic type. But it is shot through with moments of reeling shock: just smiling at an anecdote about a couple of his old professors, but, oh, they are both dead, murdered by Nazis. It is a different way of hearing about the war, because we are hearing not much about war, about what went before, a lively, multicultural and highly cultured place, about what was lost, but in paragraphs that can make one forget it was... it may spark the wish to step back into it, and the feeling that it is nearly possible, as in Midnight in Paris; this is interspersed with short moments of dislocation and disbelief at its recent destruction. Which perhaps just now, when many people in Britain and the US are experiencing a sense of unreality about political events, and fearing where they may lead, feels especially moving and frightening and hopefully not prescient.
I found myself especially moved and engaged by this little book, more than I expected, and welled up more than once; I would caution friends not to be excessively swayed by my 5 stars: not only did I read it straight after Bruno Schulz, but at time of reading was slightly ill and also hormonal; perhaps it would have got only 4 at another time.
The paragraphs which are effectively paeans to the author's mates - (a regrettable number of whom seem to have died in their youth of consumption, archetypal poets of the pre-antibiotic age), young turks who used to wonder if they might have streets named after them like writers past - may be less engaging to some readers, but if you, like me, also tend to get sentimental about certain of your friends' talents, you may at least understand where he is coming from.
And never far from my mind whilst reading, and strengthening my appetite for detail, was the realisation that this city was the capital of the territory where my grandparents were born, although to my knowledge neither went there. It had ceased to be a capital by the end of the First World War, but something of that sense of centre-ness must have lingered in the popular imagination. In the last few years I've gradually grown a book-fed sense of the cultural shape of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Galicia in particular: a country with a different shape from those now present. The places within it where the cool and cultured people were, and where, if you'd been a youngster with sights on that life, you'd have wanted to go: Vienna, Prague, Kraków; but the other, Lwów, was a mystery to me, still somehow behind the iron curtain that existed in my own childhood.
There is a risk in writing about large diverse cities that they sound essentially similar: carnivalesque and irreverent being - although the translation of Wittlin never uses those exact words - two commonalities between 'My Lwów' and Peter Ackroyd's (and others') idea of London. Wittlin had also spent time in several different major cities, including Vienna, Warsaw, Nice, Paris, and New York, so I'm going to take his word for it that there was something particularly outstanding about the cross-class mixing and the nose-thumbing at pomp and pretension in Lwów. With my own island-bound comparison, I'd say that the defining characteristic of Manchester is a cheeky, outspoken confidence; but, you might say, every city has that type, look at the traditional Cockney barrow boy. Etc. I would say that a) I see the defining characteristic of modern London as polymathy: everyone is interested in so many things, or has fingers in so many pies, the average general knowledge is higher, all sorts of people have heard of stuff when their average counterparts elsewhere wouldn't have, and b) There is such sheer abundance of that cheeky loudness in Manchester, among people who elsewhere would be more restrained, and - though perhaps I bring current economics and pop culture into it too much - there is a general sense of its being built on solid foundations: it is confidence inflated, rather than arrogance covering despair or desperation, unlike the somewhat similar insolence of Glasgow or Liverpool. (And I shan't be surprised if GR friends from some of these places furrow their brows.) All this is essentially subjective, but it's based on knowing other places well enough to compare, it's not just blind love of one town, and I trust that is Wittlin's game too.
I suspect that the second of the two main essayists in this book, eminent human rights lawyer and UCL academic Philippe Sands, was the driving force behind the project: in 'My Lviv' he describes struggling to read a Spanish translation of Wittlin with the aid of a friend during one of his visits to the city, and he's undoubtedly well placed enough to have set the wheels turning. Sands' piece is in some ways simply one of thousands about descendants of WWII refugees returning to look at their ancestral homelands, but he had been visiting the city annually for six years by the time he wrote the essay, so has a deeper acquaintance with the place than many similar examples - and it contains the unusual dimension that two of the most signficant individuals in his own field of work studied in the city within a few years of one another: the lawyers who originated the terms "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" (it being a city where no shortage of these were perpetrated). Sands elaborates on this in his own book East West Street, published last year, which contains more detail on both legal history and family memoir; City of Lions appears to be a sort of companion volume.
The reader has probably also, before reading Sands' essay, consumed the whole of Wittlin's, and if they are moved by his more poetic writing and sense of the city's past, then Sands only adds to one's idea of the place, and brings some of Wittlin's nostalgia down to earth as he points out discrimination that existed in those times of pre-1939 multiculturalism. Even if Sands' sign off of "Hampstead, London 2016" hints how comfortably far removed he is from such a world ( I see how he is mirroring Wittlin's of "Riverside, New York, 1946", but I think the prestige of the suburb detracts from the message, and polarises unnecessarily.) As with the sections in Peter Pomerantsev's Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible about architectural preservation in Moscow, there is a sense that contemporary Lviv's left-leaning intelligentsia, among whom Sands has made friends, are a somewhat embattled and tiny minority, especially those prepared to speak out, which does, as he acknowledges, make one worry a little for the future in other countries at this time.
Among the obvious drawbacks for some readers will be the large number of footnotes to Wittlin's essay - but they are, at least, thorough: I'm not sure there's anything or anyone an English speaker would wonder about that isn't briefly explained. If, however, you like getting the full sense of a place from a local's perspective without having everything sifted and anglicised, they are a joy.
All of the photographs in my e-ARC were black and white. Obviously can't be helped with the older ones - which I didn't think were well-placed in the book: the pictures of shabby buildings kept deflating the knowingly-created idyll of Wittlin's remembered Lwów; it's a shame they didn't have any of festivals, parks, mayors and the like - but it would be great if the recent ones were in colour, so they do not detract from the vitality of the book.
I'd have no hesitation in recommending City of Lions to those with connections to the region, and it is worth a look, too, for those interested in psychogeographies and histories of cities or Central Europe. It is a tiny book that looks to be under 150 pages in print, about twenty of those pictures.
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher, Pushkin Press, for this free advance review copy
June 25, 2017
Lviv is a city of fractured identities. I knew it as a Ukrainian city somewhere far away to the west. I didn't know its streets of histories. We had some family and friends who were once it citizens but it felt as much a mystery city to me as Zafón's Barcelona.
Józef Wittlin, the author of the first essay in this collection, knew Lviv as Lwow--a metropolitan Polish city, home to Jews, Austrians and Poles alike. He also remembered it as the German Lemberg during the Nazi occupation, and the Russian Lvov during the Soviet Union dominance. A city truly pinballed between countries and cultures. And although when Phillippe Sands, a British journalist, has experienced the Ukrainian Lviv, his essay spends a lot of time in the past tracing the footsteps of Wittlin and his contemporaries.
As someone who will be traveling to Lviv/Lvov for the first time in a week or so, I wouldn't recommend this book to a fellow traveler. Although Wittlin and Sands cover an important part of Lviv's history--shedding light on the city's little-known role in forming the terms of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity"--the lense that is used to introduce Lviv is so narrow that it hardly creates the panorama Sands was hoping for.
Wittlin's essay is at times comical but difficult to read. He makes references to people and places in Lviv like old friends. Even for a Slavic person all the names and words are difficult to read, and the characters hard to sympathize with. Wittlin's Lwow is a nostalgic city, meant to be read by people who are familiar with the city and its former inhabitants. It is a return rather than a discovery.
Sands' Lviv is fraught with guilt and dramatized retracing of Wittlin's steps. He invokes the fate of his own Jewish family, a portion of which escaped while others were exterminated, but because the reader has such little time to get to know everyone involved Sands' reflection ring false, over-dramatic nostalgic episodes. The book in itself feels very Western, which is a shame considering Lviv's role in Ukraine today. I didn't get the impression that Sands really understood its modern identity--he was too focused on the past to connect it to today. He writes about ghosts but ignores the real people. One of the most frustrating things was his perspective on the Maidan demonstrations. In a typical Western way he judges the Russian people harshly without realizing that they too are part of the story, they too are part of the Ukrainian identity now. He is softer on Ukrainians but even then he groups them in with "the conquerors" and doesn't really consider them much. I am not a Lvovian, but I am Russian-Ukrainian and his depiction of Lviv in 2016 did not sit comfortably with me. Perhaps because he is British, he is not as used the constantly shifting borders in Eastern and Central Europe. There history is constantly shifting, it is not a linear story of kings in queens. I liked Wittlin's perspective on Lviv as a cosmopolitan city, capable of representing many cultures and nationalities. His insistence the Lviv become a Lviv of inclusivity and diversity, learning much from its WWII scars, seems like a truer representation of Lviv today. Sands' view is too grim and narrow. I would have liked to see third essay after Sands' from a local. Because as it is, someone who doesn't know any better may just take Sands' opinions as the only truth.
I thank the writers for exposing the struggles of the Jewish, Armenian and other minority groups in Lviv, but I wish this collection was all-encompassing. I didn't really get a sense for Lviv as a city. Although all the landmarks were described along with sounds and smells, the brief and confusing references to important figures and movements left me feeling like an outsider.
This was my first experience of the Pushkin Press paperback collection. The book was well-made and felt just-right in my hands. I liked its proposed exclusivity--is there any other press in the world who would think to cover some obscure text by a forgotten Polish novelist? I thought Antonia Lloyd-Jones did a wonderful translation of Wittlin's essay and Diana Matar's photographs were subtly unsettling. I would definitely pick up another in the collection (maybe Isaac Babel's Odessa Stories, which would hit far closer to home). To anyone who is considering this collection, I would recommend to pick up a few history books before you dive in, lest you be left behind.
Józef Wittlin, the author of the first essay in this collection, knew Lviv as Lwow--a metropolitan Polish city, home to Jews, Austrians and Poles alike. He also remembered it as the German Lemberg during the Nazi occupation, and the Russian Lvov during the Soviet Union dominance. A city truly pinballed between countries and cultures. And although when Phillippe Sands, a British journalist, has experienced the Ukrainian Lviv, his essay spends a lot of time in the past tracing the footsteps of Wittlin and his contemporaries.
As someone who will be traveling to Lviv/Lvov for the first time in a week or so, I wouldn't recommend this book to a fellow traveler. Although Wittlin and Sands cover an important part of Lviv's history--shedding light on the city's little-known role in forming the terms of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity"--the lense that is used to introduce Lviv is so narrow that it hardly creates the panorama Sands was hoping for.
Wittlin's essay is at times comical but difficult to read. He makes references to people and places in Lviv like old friends. Even for a Slavic person all the names and words are difficult to read, and the characters hard to sympathize with. Wittlin's Lwow is a nostalgic city, meant to be read by people who are familiar with the city and its former inhabitants. It is a return rather than a discovery.
Sands' Lviv is fraught with guilt and dramatized retracing of Wittlin's steps. He invokes the fate of his own Jewish family, a portion of which escaped while others were exterminated, but because the reader has such little time to get to know everyone involved Sands' reflection ring false, over-dramatic nostalgic episodes. The book in itself feels very Western, which is a shame considering Lviv's role in Ukraine today. I didn't get the impression that Sands really understood its modern identity--he was too focused on the past to connect it to today. He writes about ghosts but ignores the real people. One of the most frustrating things was his perspective on the Maidan demonstrations. In a typical Western way he judges the Russian people harshly without realizing that they too are part of the story, they too are part of the Ukrainian identity now. He is softer on Ukrainians but even then he groups them in with "the conquerors" and doesn't really consider them much. I am not a Lvovian, but I am Russian-Ukrainian and his depiction of Lviv in 2016 did not sit comfortably with me. Perhaps because he is British, he is not as used the constantly shifting borders in Eastern and Central Europe. There history is constantly shifting, it is not a linear story of kings in queens. I liked Wittlin's perspective on Lviv as a cosmopolitan city, capable of representing many cultures and nationalities. His insistence the Lviv become a Lviv of inclusivity and diversity, learning much from its WWII scars, seems like a truer representation of Lviv today. Sands' view is too grim and narrow. I would have liked to see third essay after Sands' from a local. Because as it is, someone who doesn't know any better may just take Sands' opinions as the only truth.
I thank the writers for exposing the struggles of the Jewish, Armenian and other minority groups in Lviv, but I wish this collection was all-encompassing. I didn't really get a sense for Lviv as a city. Although all the landmarks were described along with sounds and smells, the brief and confusing references to important figures and movements left me feeling like an outsider.
This was my first experience of the Pushkin Press paperback collection. The book was well-made and felt just-right in my hands. I liked its proposed exclusivity--is there any other press in the world who would think to cover some obscure text by a forgotten Polish novelist? I thought Antonia Lloyd-Jones did a wonderful translation of Wittlin's essay and Diana Matar's photographs were subtly unsettling. I would definitely pick up another in the collection (maybe Isaac Babel's Odessa Stories, which would hit far closer to home). To anyone who is considering this collection, I would recommend to pick up a few history books before you dive in, lest you be left behind.
November 23, 2016
This short book comprises two illuminating and thought-provoking essays, written 50 years apart by two very different writers, but both having as their theme the same city, Lviv, as it is now known, a city which has had many different names over the years dependent on the political situation. The first essay is by Jozef Wittlin who left in the 20s and looks back on the city that continued to haunt him. First published in Polish in 1946, it is here translated into English for the first time. The second essay is by the human rights lawyer Philippe Sands who visits the city in 2016 and confronts the places where his long-lost family were exterminated in WWII. Both essays are suffused with nostalgia, melancholy and loss and make for some very moving reading. This beautiful city has witnessed so much horror and barbarity over the years, and the carefully selected photographs add to the pervasive feeling of sadness. A thoughtful and engaging volume, which with its parallel accounts brings the city to life very effectively .
March 20, 2026
How many layers, how many memories can one city contain? What makes a place? Is it the people or the place itself: the buildings, parks, benches, thoroughfares? How can you make a place yours? Two writers separated by more than half a century try to answer this question about Lemberg, Lwów, Lviv, the city that has changed hands and names so many times, to end up as part of western Ukraine after the Second World War.
Józef Wittlin wrote his essay in 1946 in New York; more than an essay, it’s a love letter to a place that did not exist anymore, not physically. Of course, Lviv was damaged during the war, but what was forcefully torn away from its fabric were its minorities — Jews, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, to name just a few — who were either exterminated, fled, or were forced to leave. Wittlin was one of them. Gone were the noisy cafés, the names of the streets, the flavors and smells, as well as the memories.
Philippe Sands, an international law lawyer and recognized writer, writes his piece about Lviv in 2016, after the Crimea annexation but still before the full-scale Russian invasion. Lviv is important to him professionally as well as personally; his grandfather was one of the people who had to leave Lviv and who never talked about it. Sands’s piece focuses on the importance of remembering, acknowledging, and recognizing the layers of contributions any place has. He superimposes Wittlin’s account on his own exploration of the city, walking the streets with two important lawyers in mind — Lauterpacht and Lemkin, responsible for coining the terms “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” who also hailed from Lviv.
And, again, he asks: what makes a place? What makes it perdure?
Józef Wittlin wrote his essay in 1946 in New York; more than an essay, it’s a love letter to a place that did not exist anymore, not physically. Of course, Lviv was damaged during the war, but what was forcefully torn away from its fabric were its minorities — Jews, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, to name just a few — who were either exterminated, fled, or were forced to leave. Wittlin was one of them. Gone were the noisy cafés, the names of the streets, the flavors and smells, as well as the memories.
Philippe Sands, an international law lawyer and recognized writer, writes his piece about Lviv in 2016, after the Crimea annexation but still before the full-scale Russian invasion. Lviv is important to him professionally as well as personally; his grandfather was one of the people who had to leave Lviv and who never talked about it. Sands’s piece focuses on the importance of remembering, acknowledging, and recognizing the layers of contributions any place has. He superimposes Wittlin’s account on his own exploration of the city, walking the streets with two important lawyers in mind — Lauterpacht and Lemkin, responsible for coining the terms “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” who also hailed from Lviv.
And, again, he asks: what makes a place? What makes it perdure?
February 6, 2025
'Mijn Lwów': een in heimwee gedrenkt boekje, vol nostalgische herinneringen aan een Poolse stad die na WOII verveld is tot het Oekraïense Lviv. Joodse bevolking quasi volledig uitgeroeid door de nazi's, Poolse bevolking daarna verdreven door de Sovjets: een loodzware geschiedenis torst die stad. Maar die wordt door Wittlin alleen heel summier, haast tussen de regels en dan nog met een ironische toets, even aangeraakt.
'Mijn Lwów' lees ik als een interessante (maar taaie) appendix bij Wittlins 'Het zout der aarde', de magistrale roman die hij nog vóór de oorlog publiceerde. Eigenlijk onthoud ik van 'Mijn Lwów' alleen het boeiende nawoord van Jan Paul Hinrichs.
De conclusie is dus duidelijk: lees vooral 'Het zout der aarde'. Die uitgave (Wereldbibliotheek, 2020) is intussen verramsjt, maar is ongetwijfeld nog ergens te vinden. 'Wie houdt van Joseph Roth, moet ook het werk van zijn goede vriend Józef Wittlin ontdekken' - zo schreef De Standaard bij publicatie van 'Het zout der aarde', en voegde er ***** aan toe. Helemaal terecht.
'Mijn Lwów' lees ik als een interessante (maar taaie) appendix bij Wittlins 'Het zout der aarde', de magistrale roman die hij nog vóór de oorlog publiceerde. Eigenlijk onthoud ik van 'Mijn Lwów' alleen het boeiende nawoord van Jan Paul Hinrichs.
De conclusie is dus duidelijk: lees vooral 'Het zout der aarde'. Die uitgave (Wereldbibliotheek, 2020) is intussen verramsjt, maar is ongetwijfeld nog ergens te vinden. 'Wie houdt van Joseph Roth, moet ook het werk van zijn goede vriend Józef Wittlin ontdekken' - zo schreef De Standaard bij publicatie van 'Het zout der aarde', en voegde er ***** aan toe. Helemaal terecht.
April 3, 2022
The city of Lviv has occupied a portion of my brain for about 5 years now. I've never been, but I read Philippe Sands' astonishing East West Stree in my second year of university, and have never forgotten the stories he told of it there.
City of Lions is a diptych of the city: Lwów as it was called when Józef Wittlin lived there, and who wrote about it at the mid-century, Lviv as is now and as written about by Sands.
These essays, written decades apart, illuminate a city that is scarred and shifts, that has pains and contradictions under its cobbled streets. A city that, as I picked this up to read, is currently mostly unscathed from Russian bombs but nonetheless a crucible of preparation for war and the movement of refugees. Not for the first time, and quite probably not for the last.
City of Lions is a diptych of the city: Lwów as it was called when Józef Wittlin lived there, and who wrote about it at the mid-century, Lviv as is now and as written about by Sands.
These essays, written decades apart, illuminate a city that is scarred and shifts, that has pains and contradictions under its cobbled streets. A city that, as I picked this up to read, is currently mostly unscathed from Russian bombs but nonetheless a crucible of preparation for war and the movement of refugees. Not for the first time, and quite probably not for the last.
January 13, 2026
A lovely duo of writers following the life of a city which I have come deeply to adore. I see the streets as they are written as if I were there in those very pungent moments.
December 23, 2016
Incredibly nostalgic, sensual and moving description of Lwów written in 1946 from exile by Józef Wittlin and an essay by Phillipe Sands with his contemporary experience of the city. My first book which I read as a member of the Polish-Scottish book club 'Zielony Balonik'. Having some family roots in Lwów I was amazed to find a mention of my relatives' family name in Wittlin's text. I can't wait to read Sands' other book "East West Street".
March 5, 2017
Spisovateľ v exile spomína na svoje mesto a čistú romantickú nostalgiu jeho textu kazí nutnosť spomenúť tých, ktorí uz nie sú - v literárnych kruhoch, nesedia v kaviarňach, v škole.
Právnik sa v našej súčasnosti do toho istého mesta vydáva hľadať minulosť, príbehy tých ktorých nestretol, ale všade naráža na biele miesta pamäti, typkov v uniforme Waffen SS, zabudnuté archívy a dejinami prepísanie identity.
Miesto všetkých príbehov je jedno - Ľvov, Lemberg, Lviv.
Právnik sa v našej súčasnosti do toho istého mesta vydáva hľadať minulosť, príbehy tých ktorých nestretol, ale všade naráža na biele miesta pamäti, typkov v uniforme Waffen SS, zabudnuté archívy a dejinami prepísanie identity.
Miesto všetkých príbehov je jedno - Ľvov, Lemberg, Lviv.
July 26, 2026
Józef Wittlin's essay is a lament for a city that he knew as Polish. He was a poet and a novelist and it shows in the way that he evokes the city of his memories. By the time he wrote this essay he had escaped the Nazis via Paris to New York, and in 1946 he was coming to terms with all that had been lost. It is not just a lament for the vibrant multicultural city, rich with fascinating characters and history in every street, and not just for all the Jewish and Polish people who were murdered, but also for the nationality of the city. Over time Lwów had been subject to numerous empires as overlords but it had not lost its original distinctive character.
In the 19th century it was Lemberg, under the Austro-Hungarian Empire’
Post WW1 it was Lwów, in independent Poland;
In WW2 it was Lvov under the Soviets; until
in 1941 it was Lemberg under the Nazi occupation; and
in 1944 it was Lviv after the Red Army liberated it and it became part of Ukraine.
But in the wake of WW2 it had been ethnically cleansed and the Allies at the Yalta Conference had assigned it to Ukraine where it is now known as Lviv.
Philippe Sands' essay — written half a century later — refers to Wittlin's as an idyll, but it's not meant pejoratively. Sands is the internationally recognised human rights lawyer who wrote East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. (2016, see my review).
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/07/26/m...
In the 19th century it was Lemberg, under the Austro-Hungarian Empire’
Post WW1 it was Lwów, in independent Poland;
In WW2 it was Lvov under the Soviets; until
in 1941 it was Lemberg under the Nazi occupation; and
in 1944 it was Lviv after the Red Army liberated it and it became part of Ukraine.
But in the wake of WW2 it had been ethnically cleansed and the Allies at the Yalta Conference had assigned it to Ukraine where it is now known as Lviv.
Philippe Sands' essay — written half a century later — refers to Wittlin's as an idyll, but it's not meant pejoratively. Sands is the internationally recognised human rights lawyer who wrote East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. (2016, see my review).
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/07/26/m...
November 20, 2018
Philippe Sands was instrumental in Pushkin Press translating Jozef Wittlin's 1946 homage to his hometown which changed hands 8 times during the turbulent long 20th century. I had already read his East West Street, which is how I came to this slim volume with its pleasing French flaps revealing maps of Lwow/ Lviv/ Lemberg, etc. at different time periods. Wittlin was a refuge in the US when he wrote his nostalgic description, although "nostalgia" isn't quite the right description for an essay that declares "gradually our entire memory becomes a cemtery" (66). Wittlin is wry and a little angry but no bitterness comes through his prose. He's also funny. See pages 40, 41, 57, 79, 87. I found his anecdote about the flashing sign BAJKA during a military parade particularly funny (57 and 87).
This was first published in Polish and obviously for other exiles. How many from that one town were in America at the time? How widely distributed was the essay? I'd like more facts about its publication, but Sands's own response in his following essay states that he returned again and again not only for his research but because of his grandfather's personal connection: "I returned because of the darkness, not in spite of it, pulled like a mosquito to blood."(102) Not a moth to a flame. He portrays himself as villain and the city as something not quite desirable. "Much has been hidden but nothing has been lost, not completely." (102)
A subset of travel writing, the researching traveler. Researcher traveling.
This was first published in Polish and obviously for other exiles. How many from that one town were in America at the time? How widely distributed was the essay? I'd like more facts about its publication, but Sands's own response in his following essay states that he returned again and again not only for his research but because of his grandfather's personal connection: "I returned because of the darkness, not in spite of it, pulled like a mosquito to blood."(102) Not a moth to a flame. He portrays himself as villain and the city as something not quite desirable. "Much has been hidden but nothing has been lost, not completely." (102)
A subset of travel writing, the researching traveler. Researcher traveling.
April 13, 2020
This combination of two individuals views of the City of Lvov 70 years apart is captivating and haunting. The City has been through an unbelievable upbringing, full of sadness and masive change. Between the time of writing of the two reflections contained in this one book some of worst attrosities to human beings occured in and from this city, and knowing this has made the two writings, and the truth, stronger. Wittlin's writing is all about people. Real people that he names and puts in their place within the city. His connection with the Jewish community, as one of many of the communities sharing this city ( his writing was about a community and city before the happenings of WWII), has a sadness placed on it in light of the later horrific events. This sadness is brought out so well withn the writing of Sands (a human rights Lawyer also with a family connection to Lvov) and his reflections on the City in its current climate. The combination creates a desire to deeply listen to the true story between the two writings of the city as it afected people. Those that Wittlin brought to life, and us that should be aware and should do all in our power to prevent this cities history from ever occuring again.
May 10, 2025
Lwow, Lviv, Lemberg, het roemrijke keizer-koninkrijk: keer op keer komt de stad weer terug. In een bijrol; als koningin van het oosten van het midden van Europa. In boeken van Olga Tocarczuk, Jenny Erpenbeck, Robert Musil. Het duurde überhaupt jaren voordat ik wist dat Lemberg Lviv was, en Lwow Lviv.
En nu las ik Jozef Wittlin. En blijkt eerlijk waar Lwow niet meer te bestaan. De gehele Joodse bevolking is - wreed genoeg - als vanzelfsprekend vermoord in WO2; de overige Poolse bewoners zijn gedeporteerd. De parel van westen in Oekraïne wordt tegenwoordig bewoont door Russen en Oekraïners. Wittlin schrijft herinneringen aan een stad die niet meer bestaat. Met mensen en levens die vergangen zijn. Veel humor. Wittlin focust op de menselijke, speelse kant. Van kroegen en straatschoffies; hij bracht met name zijn jongensjaren daar door. Leuke anekdote uit het boek, waar de burgemeester tegen de hoogste afgezant van kakanië spreekt na een uitvoering van Aïda in het Stadstheater:
“Die sänger sind güt, nur die Choren sind slecht. (Lees ipv Choren - Hoeren).
En nu las ik Jozef Wittlin. En blijkt eerlijk waar Lwow niet meer te bestaan. De gehele Joodse bevolking is - wreed genoeg - als vanzelfsprekend vermoord in WO2; de overige Poolse bewoners zijn gedeporteerd. De parel van westen in Oekraïne wordt tegenwoordig bewoont door Russen en Oekraïners. Wittlin schrijft herinneringen aan een stad die niet meer bestaat. Met mensen en levens die vergangen zijn. Veel humor. Wittlin focust op de menselijke, speelse kant. Van kroegen en straatschoffies; hij bracht met name zijn jongensjaren daar door. Leuke anekdote uit het boek, waar de burgemeester tegen de hoogste afgezant van kakanië spreekt na een uitvoering van Aïda in het Stadstheater:
“Die sänger sind güt, nur die Choren sind slecht. (Lees ipv Choren - Hoeren).
February 8, 2025
Lwów een oorspronkelijk Galicische stad (Oostenrijks-Hongaarse monarchie)en tot februari 1945 Poolse stad, nadien deel uitmakend van de Sovjetrepubliek Oekraïne, momenteel - als Lviv (en eerder Lemberg) - een omwille van de oorlog bekende Oekraïnese plaats. Het is niet de geboorteplaats van de schrijver maar hij verblijft er wel to voor het uitbreken van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Van zijn Frans verblijf vlucht hij naar de Verenigde Staten.
"Mijn Lwów" is dus een deels overdreven statement, maar het boek toont wel zijn én liefde én historische kennis van de stad. Het boekje leest vaak als een overdadig toeristische gids (gelukkig zijn er voetnoten om een en ander te verduidelijken), met bijzonder vele verwijzingen naar straten, gebouwen (kerken), wat het niet altijd aangenaam lezen maakt.
"Mijn Lwów" is dus een deels overdreven statement, maar het boek toont wel zijn én liefde én historische kennis van de stad. Het boekje leest vaak als een overdadig toeristische gids (gelukkig zijn er voetnoten om een en ander te verduidelijken), met bijzonder vele verwijzingen naar straten, gebouwen (kerken), wat het niet altijd aangenaam lezen maakt.
March 14, 2024
Beautiful, elegiac, and with humor. To call out the names of those long-gone, some writers of their time, in remembering by Wittlin, is for others to see them if briefly and perhaps even read them. Reminds me a bit of Milosz's ABCs. And the second half, by Sands, also beautiful, elegiac and with some humor, is powerful in its calling out of those lost in his memory, and ties the city of many names back to Wittlin's. (This is the third book I've read by Phillipe Sands and his narrative is as usual superb in inviting a reader to continue reading.
March 17, 2025
Getuigenis van Jozef Wittlin over Lwow (nu Lviv) de stad die hij in 1940 verliet om te vluchten naar Frankrijk en de VS. Met heimwee blikt hij terug op het straatleven, de gebedshuizen, parken en bewoners van 'zijn' stad. Tot in Lwow het oorlogsgeweld uitbreekt met massale deportaties en de Poolse stad Oekraiens grondgebied werd.
Read
August 27, 2026"Het is geen kunst om met elkaar te kunnen opschieten als je tot dezelfde clan behoort, hetzelfde volk, dezelfde partij, wanneer je dezelfde sympathieën en antipathieën hebt. Echte liefde, vriendschap en kameraadschap beginnen pas daar waar ze ontluiken tegen de achtergrond van soms schrille contrasten en tegenstellingen"
Józef Wittlin
Een boodschap die altijd relevant is.
Józef Wittlin
Een boodschap die altijd relevant is.
February 13, 2025
Als je Lviv niet kent (zoals ik) is het niet altijd even boeiend. Toch weet hij het op meesterlijke manier toch neer te zetten, dat ik ben blijven lezen. Heel knap. Het triggert wel om meer van hem te lezen.
February 13, 2026
Interesting concept about a city that has changed hands so many times over history. Many other cities in that region had a similar fate. I enjoyed the first essay much more as well as the photos. The second essay wasn’t as engaging
April 5, 2024
és com parlar amb un avi. m’hauria agradat que fos més novel·la, perquè molts trossos se senten com un llibre d’història.
January 5, 2026
Mam nadzieję że dobrze się bawił pisząc to
October 19, 2024
Un llibre bonic, escrit amb amor, però a la vegada trist, ja que recorda una ciutat que ja no existeix, aquella Lvov de diferents cultures, on es parlava polonès, alemany, ucraïnès, jiddisch. Wittlin, polonès i amic de Joseph Roth, ens recorda aquella Lwów perduda.
January 25, 2026
Wittlin’s nostalgic, indulgent and yet clear-eyed 1946 essay about his native Lwów (now modern day Lviv) is a tribute to ‘his’ city and the spirits that inhabited and defined its overall character in the time period corresponding to his own life, when it passed between Austro-Hungarian rule, briefly was captured by the Russians in World War One, and subsequently becoming incorporated into a Polish nation-state. Despite becoming Polish, the identity of the city was far from monolithic, as Wittlin notes with appreciation and fondness. Despite the seemingly light tone, there is no shying away from the darkness of Lviv’s history. Sands’ essay does much the same, though it simply cannot compete with the Polish writer in terms of prose. Yet its easy digestibility is its strength.
The only annoying feature about the contribution by Sands is his tendency to present’s Lviv’s Soviet era as a purely negative one, defined by terrible architecture, repression and cultural vandalism. While far from utopian and full of deformations and injustices great and small, it cannot be presented so simply to English language readers; especially after the books and writings of Owen Hatherley who has now for quite some time been pointing to all kinds of contrary examples in architecture, murals, and so on, in formerly Soviet Ukraine and elsewhere.
The only annoying feature about the contribution by Sands is his tendency to present’s Lviv’s Soviet era as a purely negative one, defined by terrible architecture, repression and cultural vandalism. While far from utopian and full of deformations and injustices great and small, it cannot be presented so simply to English language readers; especially after the books and writings of Owen Hatherley who has now for quite some time been pointing to all kinds of contrary examples in architecture, murals, and so on, in formerly Soviet Ukraine and elsewhere.
November 12, 2025
I’ve had the good fortune to spend time in Lviv three times over the past couple of years, so when I spotted this in the bookstore, I was always going to be intrigued.
However, this is only (and barely) a 3-star for those who have been or are associated with the city. For the uninitiated, despite it being a very short volume, it would be no more than 2-star. The first act in particular is maudlin and meandering, and it is only the second act that wrings great relevance from even it.
Sands in the second half is not afraid to shine an unforgiving light on chapters of Lviv’s Second World War history that go uncommemorated.
Written as it was in 2016, after the Maidan and Crimea, but before the full-scale invasion, it does actually now beg a third act. Lviv as the gateway for evacuees from other parts of Ukraine, whether to leave the country, or remain in the city as IDPs. Lviv as the bustling hub for any number of NGOs and international volunteers. Lviv as the city where the war is everywhere but (mostly) nowhere. Sands would be well placed to write and - despite my issues with this book - I’d come back to read.
However, this is only (and barely) a 3-star for those who have been or are associated with the city. For the uninitiated, despite it being a very short volume, it would be no more than 2-star. The first act in particular is maudlin and meandering, and it is only the second act that wrings great relevance from even it.
Sands in the second half is not afraid to shine an unforgiving light on chapters of Lviv’s Second World War history that go uncommemorated.
Written as it was in 2016, after the Maidan and Crimea, but before the full-scale invasion, it does actually now beg a third act. Lviv as the gateway for evacuees from other parts of Ukraine, whether to leave the country, or remain in the city as IDPs. Lviv as the bustling hub for any number of NGOs and international volunteers. Lviv as the city where the war is everywhere but (mostly) nowhere. Sands would be well placed to write and - despite my issues with this book - I’d come back to read.
July 24, 2023
Your appreciation of this book may well depend on what your education left you feeling about the word 'essay', for this is a brace of them. And of course the first one is far too impressionistic for what we remember of essays at school, where we sought the definitive and incontrovertible. It looks back at Lviv (for want of putting accents on certain letters) in the first half of the last century, celebrating the place then, and those who found the life it provided. Compared to that, the second one (from the creator of the My Nazi Legacy documentary) is much more journalistic, responding to both the modern city and the previous work. Of course, I liked that, but I didn't dislike either half, however different they were, such is my interest in Poland and Ukraine. It's an odd book, never making anything as simple as its derivation and raison d'etre known, but not a bad one.
August 24, 2019
Книга разделена на две части. Вторая, написанная британским юристом, по моему мнению, намного интереснее, но она частично построена на первой части, которую написал житель Львова и эмигрант в середине прошлого века. Некоторые моменты описаны в книге невероятно тонко, в частности связанные с посещением города сыновьями деятелей третьего рейха. Книга дает очень важный взгляд на происходящие во Львове и Украины процессы.
December 8, 2016
"City of Lions" consists of two evocative essays written 70 years apart. Both look at the city now known as Lviv (and now part of Ukraine), a city constantly shifting yet forever haunted by the past. Recommended for anyone interested in Central/Eastern European history and literature.
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