Velyki Mosty

• Official Name — Velyki Mosty • Native Name — Великі Мости • Settlement Type — City • Subdivision Type — Country • Subdivision Name — Ukraine • Subdivision Type1 — Oblast • Subdivision Name1 — Lviv Oblast • Subdivision Type2 — Raion • Subdivision Name2 — Sheptytskyi Raion • Leader Title — Mayor • Population As Of — 2022 • Population Total — 6286 • Website — http: www.Velyki Mosty-adm.gov.ua/ • Subdivision Name3 — Velyki Mosty urban hromada • Subdivision Type3 — Hromada • Timezone1 — EET • Utc Offset — +2 • Timezone Dst — EEST • Utc Offset Dst — +3 • Population Density Km2 — 7738 • Population Density Sq Mi — 4808

In the Kingdom of Poland, the village of Mosty was a royal property, with its own starostas. The village itself was established in 1472, and was part of Belz Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province. In the late 15th century, Mosty was ransacked and destroyed in a Crimean Tatars raid, and in July 1497, during the Moldavian expedition of John I Albert, a unit of Teutonic Knights under Johann von Tiefen, called upon by the Polish king, marched through the village. On 23 July 1549, during the period known as the Polish Golden Age, Mosty received Magdeburg rights. It was a royal town. Following the order of King Sigismund II Augustus, a nobleman Andrzej Rokicki became the first local wójt. Mosty enjoyed several royal privileges, issued in the years 1550, 1553, 1566, 1576, 1583, 1604. The town also became the seat of a starosta. Following the First Partition of Poland (1772), the town became part of Austrian Galicia. In 1846, a complex of military barracks was built in Mosty. In the Second Polish Republic, the Central Police Academy was located here. • Illustration — Fire station in 1937 The Jewish population was important in the town before World War II. Following the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, the town was initially occupied by the Soviet Union. In 1939, the Soviets carried out a massacre of the staff and trainees of the local Polish police academy. Afterwards, as of June 29, 1941, Germans occupied the town and kept the Jews prisoners in a ghetto using them as forced labour before murdering them all. In early July, 1941, local residents burned 19 Jews in the synagogue. Throughout the occupation, Ukrainian police assisted in most of the murders of their Jewish neighbors. The town commander, Captain Johann Kroupa in the military-engineer division of the Wehrmacht, protected Jews from death during the first part of the occupation, employing more than 2,000, including 1,200 women, and helping forge work permits for some. He was later court-martialed for protecting Jews and ended up in Soviet captivity. Until 18 July 2020, Velyki Mosty belonged to Sokal Raion. The raion was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Lviv Oblast to seven. The area of Sokal Raion was merged into Chervonohrad Raion (modern Sheptytskyi Raion). Currently, Mosty has a local branch of the Association of Polish Culture of the Lviv Land.

Currently, as of 2021, the population of the town is 6,312 people. • Illustration — Rata River in Velyki Mosty

• Wlodzimierz Puchalski, Polish photographer. • Andrii Rachinsky, Ukrainian composer. • Wlodzimierz Stozek, Polish mathematician. • Siegfried Weyr, Austrian painter.