Lwów Eaglets ( pl, Orlęta lwowskie) is a term of affection that is applied to the
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
child soldiers
Children (defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as people under the age of 18) have been recruited for participation in military operations and campaigns throughout history and in many cultures.
Children in the military, includ ...
who defended the city of
Lwów
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...
( uk, L'viv), in
Eastern Galicia
Eastern Galicia ( uk, Східна Галичина, Skhidna Galychyna, pl, Galicja Wschodnia, german: Ostgalizien) is a geographical region in Western Ukraine (present day oblasts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil), having also essential h ...
, during the
Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–1919).
Background
The city now known in Ukrainian as
Lviv
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...
( pl, Lwów) was, before the
Dissolution of Austria-Hungary, known as Lemberg and was the capital of
Emperor Karl's
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.
Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...
were a prevailing ethnic group in the Kingdom overall, but in eastern Galicia,
Ukrainians
Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. The majority ...
were a majority (61%), with Poles a significant minority (27%) and dominating the cities along with
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
. In Lemberg, according to the Austrian census of 1910, 51% of the city's population were
Roman Catholics
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, 28% Jews, and 19%
Ukrainian Greek Catholics; 86% of the city's population spoke Polish and 11% Ukrainian.
In the final days of the Habsburg Monarchy, on 1 November 1918, Ukrainian soldiers from Austrian army units occupied Lemberg's public buildings and military depots, raised Ukrainian flags throughout the city and proclaimed the birth of a new
Ukrainian state. While the Ukrainian minority enthusiastically supported the proclamation, the city's Jewish minority remained mostly neutral towards it and the city's Polish majority were shocked to find themselves under Ukrainian rule.
[ Orest Subtelny, ]
Ukraine: a history
', pp. 367–368, University of Toronto Press, 2000, Reacting to this military revolution, Poles rose up throughout the city. Polish high school students and scouts numbering only 200, organized a small pocket of resistance in a school at the western outskirts and managed to defeat battle-hardened Ukrainian veterans of the Great War with only 64 outdated rifles. After initial clashes, the defenders were joined by hundreds of volunteers, mostly boy scouts, students and youngsters. More than 1,000 people joined the Polish ranks in the first day of the fighting.
Description
Among them were many young volunteers, who became known as the ''Lwów Eaglets''. Initially, the term was confined to those who had participated in the
fights
Combat ( French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent conflict meant to physically harm or kill the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed ( not using weapons). Combat is sometimes resorted to as a method of self-defense, or ...
within the city between 1 and 22 November 1918, and the following siege by the Ukrainian army between 23 November 1918 and 22 May 1919. With time, however, the term's application was broadened, and it is now used for all the young soldiers who fought in the area of
Eastern Galicia
Eastern Galicia ( uk, Східна Галичина, Skhidna Galychyna, pl, Galicja Wschodnia, german: Ostgalizien) is a geographical region in Western Ukraine (present day oblasts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil), having also essential h ...
for the Polish cause in the Polish-Ukrainian War and the
Polish-Bolshevik War. In addition to the young Polish nationals of Lviv, those fighting in the
Polish-Ukrainian battle for Przemyśl are also frequently referred to as ''Przemyskie Orlęta'' ('"Przemyśl Eaglets").
Cemetery
After the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, the Lwów Eaglets were interred at the
Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów
The Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów ( pl, Cmentarz Obrońców Lwowa, Cmentarz Orląt, ''Cemetery of Eaglets'', ''Orlat Cemetery'') is a memorial and a burial place for the Poles and their allies who died in Lwów ( ukr, Lviv) during the hosti ...
(Polish popular name: ''Cmentarz Orląt Lwowskich''), part of the
Lychakiv Cemetery. The Cemetery of the Defenders held the remains of both teenaged and adult soldiers, including foreign volunteers from France and the United States. The Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów was designed by
Rudolf Indruch, a student at the Lviv Institute of Architecture, himself an Eaglet. Among the most notable Eaglets to be buried there was the 14-year-old Jerzy Bitschan, the youngest of the city's defenders, whose name became an icon of the
Polish interbellum
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...
.
Also resting in the Eaglet's pantheon is the six-year-old Oswald Anissimo who was executed, together with his father, Michał, by Ukrainian militiamen.
[ M. Gałęzowski]
Na wzór Orląt lwowskich
, Biuletyn IPN, nr 11-12/2008, p. 99. Ukrainian military leader Dmytro Vitovsky
Dmytro Vitovsky ( uk, Дмитро Вітовський) (8 November 1887 – 2 or 4 August 1919) was a Ukrainian politician and military leader.
Vitovsky was born into a family of gentry. in the village of Medukha in Galicia (today in Ivano-Fran ...
threatened summary execution
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes include ...
to all men living in houses from where shots were fired.
After the annexation of Eastern Galicia by the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in World War II during the
Soviet invasion of Poland
The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subse ...
and then the
expulsion of ethnic Poles from the province, the graves were destroyed in 1971, and the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów was turned into a municipal waste dump and then a truck depot.
After the
dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
and the formation of an independent
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, work began on the restoration of the cemetery despite obstruction from local nationalists. However, Polish support for the 2004 Ukrainian
Orange Revolution greatly weakened local opposition, and the cemetery was officially reopened in a joint Polish-Ukrainian ceremony on 24 June 2005.
The last surviving Lwów Eaglet, Major Aleksander Sałacki (born 12 May 1904), died in
Tychy, on 5 April 2008.
See also
*
Battle of Lwów (1918)
*
Battle of Zadwórze
*
Leopold Lis-Kula Leopold Lis-Kula (nom de guerre Lis) was a Colonel of Infantry of the Polish Army, and recipient of the Virtuti Militari. Lis Kula was born on November 11, 1896, in the village of Kosina near Łańcut (Austrian Galicia), and died on March 7, 1919, ...
*
St Andrew Bobola Church, Hammersmith
References
External links
Official website* With the Lwów Eaglets dear to their hearts
Orlęta, Polish Folk Song and Dance Grouprecreate an evening
cafe scene in Lwów from the 1920s
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lwow Eaglets
History of Lviv
Polish people of the Polish–Ukrainian War
Children in the military
Child-related organisations in Poland