Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family

by Zalewski, Andrew

  Bohorodczany. The Dominican church and its archives suffered severe damage during military operations in 1916.

  Bohorodczany. The church interior after the artillery shelling in 1916.

  On the third birthday of Irena Sobolewska, Helena’s and Franciscus’s daughter, there were most likely no celebrations at home. Despite the declaration that the big offensive was over, Bohorodczany continued to be in the path of stubborn fighting. The River Bystrzyca, the same one that flowed just behind the Sobolewski’s ancestral home, separated the Central powers on the left bank from the Russian army on the right. Almost every day, skirmishes would break out between the opposing sides just beyond the town. Predictably, the Russians would report taking over a field post or breaking through barbed wire and taking a few prisoners, whereas the Austrian command would declare that the left bank of the river was well-defended, with attackers successfully being repelled. In the big scheme of the Great War, this was nothing, but it added to Helena’s struggle to keep her family safe.37 Even Christmas did not bring a resolution to the stalemate, with shooting and hand-to-hand combat, bayonets mounted, in neighboring Lachowce. The Dominican church, which had witnessed so many events celebrated by the Sobolewski family over the past 150 years, suffered heavy damage from artillery fire. But local tragedy and destruction were just another note in the newspaper when, in the closing days of 1916, the New York Times reported, “Russian troops, operating in the region of the River Bystritsa [sic], in Galicia,...broke through the barbed wire entanglements in front of the Austro-German advanced posts yesterday and penetrated into Bohorodczany Stare [Old], southwest of Stanislau.”38

  Map of the Kerensky Offensive of 1917. After the Russian offensive faltered, Stanislawow and Bohorodczany were recaptured by Austrian and German troops in July 1917. (Modified with permission of the Department of History, United States Military Academy.)

  THE SUMMER OF 1917 BROUGHT a new Russian offensive, true to the now almost predictable rhythm of recurring quiet periods followed by armed flareups. But its aim was more than a straightforward military one. The tsar had been overthrown earlier in the year, and the weak new government was hopeful that good news from the front would rally an increasingly restless society at home.

  The very long front line spanned the territories of several countries from north to south; yet the stretch that really mattered in July 1917 was less than two miles from Stanislawow.1 For more than a year, the Central powers to the west and the Russian forces to the east faced each other in the Black Forest, on the hills that guarded the passage toward Lvov. The aim of Russia’s generals was to rout the weakened Austro-Hungarian army, as they had managed to do at the beginning of the war. As events unfolded, the outcome of that adventure would produce quite opposite results, setting the stage for calamitous changes in Russia that would bring the Bolsheviks to power.2

  At first, everything seemed to go as planned; Russian infantry marched west through Stanislawow’s streets to strengthen the coming offensive, and heavy guns were mounted in gardens and parks, ready to start bombardments in the direction of the nearby front. Even Russia’s minister of war, Alexander Kerensky, arrived in the city to fire up his troops for battle. But a few more weeks of fighting again proved all predictions wrong, and the result became clearer with every report from the front: The Russian army had no will to fight and was rapidly disintegrating. The beginning of the end, of what was called the Kerensky Offensive, became quite apparent with a hasty retreat of Russian troops and the movement of large amounts of ammunition maneuvering east through Stanislawow. In the chaos, groups of Cossacks marauded through the city streets, unleashing their wrath, setting buildings on fire, and taking whatever they could find from stores, cellars, and private homes. Civilians were threatened, ambushed, robbed, and often stripped of their clothes. Explosions at ammunition depots in various parts of the city added to the sense that no one was in charge. The few remaining Russian officers, pleading for an orderly withdrawal, were simply ignored. After the turmoil in their own country earlier the same year, this was a very different army, in which orders were no longer to be obeyed. One Russian soldier mused that in the tsar’s army, the officers had beaten soldiers, but soldiers could now beat their officers.3

  In the midst of this mayhem, a unit of mounted lancers, all ethnic Poles serving in the Russian army, suddenly entered the city to thwart an imminent takeover by the Central powers. It did not take long for the trotting cavalrymen to realize who was causing the chaos in the city; without wasting time, they quickly directed their arms against the rampaging Cossacks. A strange sort of street fighting erupted, with lancers’ sabers slashing unruly groups of looters and shots fired between two units of the same army with quite different missions in mind. The clashes continued into the night, and the Cossacks were finally reined in, saving the city from further carnage. But this was far from peace; at best, an uneasy order had been only temporarily restored.

  Within a couple of days, what had been anticipated by everyone became a reality; German troops supporting the Austro-Hungarian army broke through Russian positions in several places and approached the same road that Helena had traveled so many times between Bohorodczany and Stanislawow. What happened next could be seen as a poorly executed battle or, as some later suggested, the revenge of Russian commanders for the lancers’ efforts to restore order in the city. In a last-ditch effort to slow advancing troops before Stanislawow was fully encircled, the cavalry was ordered to attack the approaching Germans. The lancers galloped through the outskirts of Stanislawow toward a heavily armed infantry. Clearly, they were not a match for the well-dug-in German units; nonetheless, they charged six times at the enemy that afternoon. In the end, some were mowed down by machine-gun fire, with others injured when their horses tripped in fields treacherously dissected by old trenches and barbed wire.

  Commemorative medal with an inscription reading, “To Polish lancers for the defense of Stanislawow.” It was issued in Vienna in recognition of the Polish lancers who saved Stanislawow from the chaos during the withdrawal of Russian troops in 1917.

  Days later, old-fashioned military gallantry was on display when the field commanders on both sides of the front acknowledged the lancers’ bravery. The German commander General Litzman, speaking with the city’s mayor, would say, “Mr. Mayor, tell those lancers who attacked [my] Bavarian boys and now happen to be in our custody that the report I received spoke of their fearlessness and gallantry. Tell them that in our opinion they were courageous.” The Russian soon-to-be commander in chief, General Kornilow, sent a telegram to the unit praising the lancers and according several of them the Cross of St. George, the highest military decoration in the Russian army. But pompous words and medals were useless to those who had fallen.4

  “Traumatized and exhausted” was the best description of the general mood after German and Austro-Hungarian forces finally entered Stanislawow on July 25, 1917. There were no spontaneous celebrations in the streets, even though the defeat of the Russians was such a climactic event. When Charles I, Emperor Franz Joseph’s successor, appeared in Stanislawow in a show of compassion toward Galicians, the visit was largely met with indifference. In stark contrast to its front-page coverage in the Viennese press, the young emperor’s ride in an open car through the streets of Stanislawow was reported on the back pages of Galicia’s main newspaper. No doubt this would have been viewed as a remarkable event in peaceful times.5 The new monarch toured damaged parts of the city, shook hands with troops (mainly German), and even promised compassionate treatment for those lancers who were now being held as POWs. As events would subsequently show, the latter pronouncement did not amount to much; pleas for the prisoners’ release continued for months to come.6

  Visit of the new emperor of Austro-Hungary, Charles I, to Stanislawow. (Wiener Bilder August 8, 1917; ŐNB, Vienna.)

  The Regiec family remained in Stanislawow during the last Russian occupation and witnessed the chaos of those eventful summer days. Again, a bit of l
uck was on their side; the fires and looting spared the short stretch of St. Joseph Street where they lived. Whether Joseph Regiec was able to receive his regular salary under the last Russian rule is unclear, although it is known that his department of the Railway Directorate was moved to the safety of a small town in Austrian Silesia (in today’s northern Czech Republic).7

  Somewhere around Stanislawow during the war. Wanda Regiec (left), Helena Sobolewska (middle) with Irena Sobolewska, and an unknown couple (right). The man is wearing an Austrian army uniform.

  With the Russian army now pushed back far beyond prewar borders, and armed hostilities receding on the eastern front, Galicia was slowly regaining its bearings. This was not an end to the Great War, which still raged in other parts of Europe, with many Galician soldiers still under arms. Still, the fall of 1917 brought citizens’ appeals to rebuild Galicia’s civil society as quickly as possible. These calls reflected more than just a longing for life to return to normal; there was other subtext as well. The top administrators, mainly Polish and Jewish, had been evacuated to the safety of western Galicia during the last Russian occupation; and concerns had been raised by some that this could set up a dangerous status quo. The fear was that eastern Galicia would become dominated by the Ukrainian political organizations that had remained there. Who would ultimately control this part of the country? That was still an open question, but it was clear that whatever group dominated the schools, railroads, and city offices would have the upper hand in postwar arrangements. For those in Stanislawow and other cities in eastern Galicia, this anxiety colored demands for the old order to return quickly.8

  In Stanislawow, the road to normal life was made difficult because of food shortages. With supplies of flour gone, there was no bread for 15 straight days in the winter of 1917; food was rationed and prices climbed. At some point, conditions were so dire that the intervention of Emperor Charles I was sought to improve delivery of basic nourishment to the starving populace. From time to time, the public had been riveted by stories of speculators being caught or the German army secretly shipping trainloads of food back home.9

  Over a period of months, military restrictions on travel were lifted; then, slowly, some of the prewar civil administration offices reopened. Plans to bring the Railway Directorate back to Stanislawow were supposed to be executed as soon as possible. In reality, the return to a normally functioning state of affairs proved to be a challenge. The railway, often cited as the engine of employment in Stanislawow, was on the brink of collapse. Heavy equipment and even small tools were gone from the machine shops at the railroad yard; Joseph Regiec’s elegant administrative offices downtown had been plundered and left empty by the departing Russians.10

  But Joseph Regiec was a man who refused to be easily overtaken by life’s adversities. Not long after all these events, he was publicly thanked in the main city newspaper for a donation to support elementary schools—help that was badly needed, given the devastation of war. On another occasion, Joseph was elected, along with the deputy mayor of Stanislawow, to a council of volunteers overseeing a boarding school that had fallen into disrepair. We can guess that only a few at that time knew the reasons education had such a special meaning to this railroad official.11

  MY GRANDMOTHER’S LIFE IN Bohorodczany was not much easier. The town had suffered much damage due to its precarious location on the front line during the previous year. Helena and Franciscus’s house was a casualty of the war, along with some of their belongings, taken by the retreating Russians.12 With most buildings in ruins, the township office, post office, and district court had to relocate; this only added to feelings of abandonment among those who remained in town. The surrounding fields had lain bare for over a year for lack of agricultural supplies, and a despondent call from Bohorodczany indicated that even potatoes, the staple of the diet in hard times, were not available for planting in the coming year.13

  Nonetheless, Helena considered herself lucky; she was physically unharmed. Some of her Jewish neighbors had been victimized even more during the Russian occupations; on at least one occasion, the dreaded Cossacks had brutally raped several Jewish women seeking refuge in a synagogue in Bohorodczany. This was a sad reminder that the heroes of one side, some of them proudly called the Eagles of the Tsar, were cruel thugs and murderers to the other.14

  Despite the gloom of the situation, Helena’s school reopened, allowing her to return to work. Soon, this young teacher was assessed by a district school inspector during a routine visit to the school. After observing the classroom, a short note was left in Helena’s file: “Work quite satisfactory, teaching methods good, talent good, [class] behavior commendable.”15 We can be sure that Helena felt relieved and happy with this outcome, which in some small measure may have compensated for the hardships of those times. With inflation spiraling out of control, teachers’ salaries were considered painfully low; however, public pleas for bonuses and pay raises fell on deaf ears. The coffers of Galicia were empty.

  The arrival of cold weather caused closings at Helena’s school and others, as there was neither coal nor a sufficient supply of wood to heat the classrooms. In Stanislawow, temporary narrow-gauge tracks were placed on the streets to deliver logs from the surrounding mills as quickly as possible to the freezing population.16 Despite these hardships, real hope surfaced in December 1917. An armistice had been agreed to between the Central powers (including Germany, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey) and the weakened Russia, and on December 17, the eastern front fell silent along its thousand-mile stretch from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

  Irena Sobolewska during the war.

  In fact, Bolshevik Russia, convulsed by its internal fight for survival, had asked for peace without territorial gains or demands for war reparations.17 The mood was definitely more hopeful, and a playful message arrived from Galician troops enjoying a rare respite from fighting: “Greetings to Stanislawow’s beautiful and ugly young ladies from the battlefield. The volunteers of the Riflemen Regiment.”18 For Helena, talk of restoring direct mail service between the adversaries was a helpful sign that news about Franciscus would become more frequent. Her ultimate hope was the promise of POW exchanges that seemed to be just around the corner.

  For the first time in years, the annual cycle on the eastern front, with armies swinging back and forth, looked less likely to recur. Peace talks continued on and off, as events in Russia spiraled out of control. On February 9, 1918, full recognition of the Ukrainian National Republic by Austro-Hungary, and then by other powers sitting at the negotiating table, became the first in a series of agreements. That news was greeted with jubilation by Ukrainians living in Galicia, but Poles felt threatened. For the moment, the Ukrainian state encompassed only the territory lost by Russia in the war with the Central powers, an area that was clearly beyond the borders of Galicia. Still, many wondered whether, in time, eastern Galicia might become part of that emerging country. Poles had not been invited to the signing of the final peace treaty and felt left behind in their own quest for independence. Their anxiety was fueled by the resurgence of an old dispute about what territory ought to belong to which future state. Even the inclusion of a sliver of historically disputed land in the Ukrainian National Republic triggered massive street marches by Poles, with passionate speeches. It did not matter that before the war, that territory had been situated outside Galicia; the claims and counterclaims were setting the stage for dangerous conflict.

  In Stanislawow, Polish railroad employees went on a short strike, and declarations of protest from the city council—signed by Mayor Nimhin and the teachers’ association—followed. Approximately 12,000 people took to the streets there; similar protests happened in Lvov and other cities. With the war unfinished but becoming increasingly distant, public opinion was whipped up to another level of excitement by unfortunate phrases like “the fourth partition of Poland,” even though such a country did not now formally exist. In Vienna, Polish parliamentarians protested and threatened to join the oppo
sition, but to no avail.

  It was clear that the sympathy of the Central powers was shifting toward settling the potentially explosive issue of eastern Galicia on terms less than favorable to Poles. Within a few weeks, there were more marches, this time in support of the new country and attended by throngs of Ukrainians living in the Stanislawow area. But Galicia was lucky; for the most part, these demonstrations remained peaceful, at least for the moment.19 In the end, the Ukrainian National Republic turned out to be an unstable quasi-state besieged by Bolsheviks on one side and controlled by Germans on the other; but its creation brought back unresolved anxieties and xenophobia. It was only a matter of time before the next spark would start a fire.

  Ukrainians demonstrating on the streets of Stanislawow after the announcement of formation of the Ukrainian National Republic. (Wiener Bilder March 17, 1918; ŐNB, Vienna.)

  The formal peace treaty between Russia and the four Central powers was signed on March 3, 1918, in Brest-Litovsk (now Belarus). Russia was an undisputed loser, ceding a large territory to Germany that included Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, and all the former Polish lands it had governed since the partition of Poland in the eighteenth century. Under the explicit and humiliating terms of the agreement, Russia renounced any claims to the lost territories and abrogated any right to intervene in the affairs of the nations now firmly under German control.