Lviv eagle
The Lviv eagle ( Polish Orlęta Lwowskie ) (also: Junge Adler von Lemberg or Defender von Lemberg ) is a name for the Polish child soldiers and young people who left the city of Lemberg during the Polish-Ukrainian War in 1918 and 1919 and during the Polish -Soviet War 1920 defended.
history
Originally the term was applied exclusively to the young volunteers who took part in the defense of Lviv during the siege of the city by the Ukrainian army from November 1st to November 22nd, 1918. Over time, however, the use of the term expanded, and so it is now used for all young soldiers who fought in this area to defend Poland during the Polish-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Soviet War. In addition to the defenders of Lviv, the defenders of Przemyśl are often referred to as Przemyskie Orlęta .
Cemetery of the Defenders of Lviv
After the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, the fallen Lviv eagles were buried in the Lviv Defenders' cemetery, which is part of the Lychakiv Cemetery . Child and youth soldiers, as well as regular soldiers, including foreign volunteers from France and the United States, are buried in the defenders cemetery . According to the wishes of its Polish builders, the cemetery should also be a monument of glory and underpin the "eternal rights of Poland bought with blood" to the territories of eastern Galicia .
The Lviv defenders cemetery was designed by Rudolf Indruch, a student at the Lviv Faculty of Architecture and an eagle himself. Among the eagles buried in the cemetery is 14-year-old Jurek Bitschan (1904–1918), the youngest defender of the city, whose name became a symbol of the Polish interwar period .
The buried include mainly Polish men, women and young people, but also a few German-speaking Lvivs of all religions, including Jews, and from all walks of life from simple craftsmen to aristocrats.
After the Soviet annexation of East Galicia with Lviv in 1939, the cemetery fell into disrepair and was razed to the ground by tanks in 1971. Since then, the Lviv Defenders' cemetery has served as a municipal rubbish dump.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of an independent Ukraine, work began on the restoration of the “Eagle Cemetery”, but this was delayed by the resistance of the Ukrainian nationalists. As a result of Polish support for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, the Ukrainian opposition gave up its resistance and the cemetery was reopened in a solemn Polish-Ukrainian ceremony on June 24, 2005.
The cemetery, once thought of as a Polish victory monument, is now considered a place of Ukrainian-Polish reconciliation. In addition, the cemetery of the Sitscher riflemen was created.
swell
- ^ Artur canvas: Obrona Lwowa w listopadzie 1918 roku . Instytut Lwowski. Retrieved December 11, 2012.
- ^ Obrona Przemyśla w 1918 roku ( pl ) Archived from the original on September 2, 2013. Retrieved on May 21, 2014.
- ^ Bogumiła Berdychowska: Poland - Ukraine. The shadow of history. In: East-West. European Perspectives , Vol. 6 (2005), Issue 3, pp. 201-208 ( online , accessed on March 17, 2020).
