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1st Mountain Division, following behind the SS Viking Motorized Division, occupies Lemberg late in the evening on June 29th/30th.

When they occupy the two local prisons, they find over 4,000 dead bodies, murdered by the NKVD and the GRU as they retreated.

The intelligence section of the 49th Army Corps observed in its first report, dated that same day: “According to the account of Major Heinz, commander of a battalion of Regiment 800, thousands of brutally murdered persons were found in the Lvov prisons. The 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions are hereby ordered to assign journalists and photographers to cover these atrocities.

The chief military judge of the Corps and the liaison officer of the Foreign Office with the High Command of the 17th Army have been sent to Lvov to carry out in-depth investigations.”

Wilke, chief judge of the 49th Army Corps, issued a report dated 1 July 1941: “The examination of the bodies found at the OGPU prison indicated that the killings had been preceded by torture.... The majority of the victims are Ukrainians; the rest are Polish. Witnesses also reported that in this prison two German wounded pilots had been interned. A Luftwaffe belt and a pilot’s cap were found in the prison. In ... one of the mass graves a Luftwaffe helmet was also found. Thus it must be assumed that these German airmen are among the bodies that could not be identified.” Judge Wilke remained in Lvov until 6 July and took the sworn depositions of numerous witnesses, including those of senior medical officer Dr. Richard Eckl, veterinarian Dr. Joseph Brachetka, and noncommissioned officer Kurt Dittrich.

Further witness depositions, including those of Polish and Ukrainian detainees who had survived the liquidations at the prisons, were obtained by Judge Möller, on special assignment to the High Command of the 17th Army. On 6 July 1941 Möller took the deposition of Dr. Saeltzer, who had accompanied Tomforde to the prisons on 30 June 1941:

The Brygidky prison ... was still burning. There I met a young Ukrainian, aged about 24 years.... He claimed that 24 hours before, shortly before he was to be executed, he had succeeded in escaping from cell 3 of the left wing; he guided me through the cellars, the ground floor, and the first floor of the prison. The people who rushed in through the main entrance wailed and lamented while asking to see their relatives, with whom they had been in contact two days before by shouting from outside the prison. We discovered ... in the first four cellars a considerable number of bodies, the upper layer being relatively fresh and the lower layers in the pile already in advanced decomposition. In the fourth cellar the bodies were covered by a thin layer of sand. In the first courtyard we found several stretchers stained with blood. On one of the stretchers I saw the body of a male who had been killed by a bullet through the back of the head.... I ordered that the cellars should be immediately cleared, and in the course of the next three days 423 corpses were brought out to the courtyard for identification. Among the bodies there were young boys aged 10, 12, and 14 and young women aged 18, 20, and 22, besides old men and women....

From there I continued to the former OGPU prison.... We broke the door leading to the lower prison rooms and saw there 4 corpses at the foot of the stairway, among them a young woman aged about 20 years, who apparently was shot at the very last minute; in the first large room the corpses were piled up to about half the height of the room.... In the courtyard were two mounds of earth from which parts of corpses stuck out. There too the recovery of the corpses was immediately begun, and they were carried to the main courtyard.... In the second courtyard of the OGPU prison I found at one of the gates a Luftwaffe cap and a parachute belt....

[At] the military prison in the northern part of the town ... the stench of decomposition was so strong and there was so much blood under the mountains of corpses that we had to wear a Polish gas mask in order to enter the cellar and carry out the necessary investigations. Young women, men and older women were piled up layer upon layer all the way to the ceiling.... The third and fourth cellars were only about three-fourths full. Over 460 corpses were taken out of these cellars. Many of the bodies showed evidence of serious torture, mutilations of arms and legs, and shackling. The recovery of the remaining bodies was stopped upon orders of the commander because as a consequence of the heat the decomposition of the bodies was already advanced, and there was no possibility of identifying the scantily dressed corpses.

At the military hospital the bodies of three members of the Luftwaffe were found. Judge Möller ordered a medico-legal autopsy to determine the cause of death, and the pathologist of the 17th Army, Dr. Herbert Siegmund, was entrusted with the task. The corpses of four other German airmen found at the OGPU prison were also subjected to forensic investigation. On 3 July 1941 Judge Möller took a deposition from Dr. Siegmund, who explained that the first three soldiers had been shot dead in their hospital beds:

The body lying on the left bed next to the window had a superficial skin wound on the right chest, the size of the palm of my hand. The wound was several days old and had been freshly dressed. Moreover, there was a more recent bullet wound inflicted by a 6.5-mm bullet through the skull slightly over the left ear; the exit wound was about one centimeter in diameter through the right temple, which was considerably destroyed.... The body on the middle bed had a broken jaw that had been professionally bandaged ... the examination also established a fresh bullet wound on the left chest, fourth centimeters down from the nipple, in the area of the heart. The body on the third bed next to the wall had a large wound in the under side of the lower leg ... a fresh bullet wound of the same caliber as that seen in the other corpses had been inflicted on the right side of the victim’s stomach, some six centimeters under the costal arch.

Examination of the four other fliers’ bodies indicated that they had not been previously wounded. Three had been killed by a shot through the head; the fourth had no head injuries, but the rest of the body was in such an advanced state of decomposition that an autopsy was not deemed feasible.