Posted on 04/12/2005 11:47:16 AM PDT by lizol
Chances to resolve dispute over historic Polish cemetery in Lviv
2005-04-12, 10:45
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised to resolve the controversy over the restoration of a Polish cemetery in Lviv.
Called the Young Eagles Cemetery, it is a place where Polish youths who defended the then Polish city against Ukrainians in 1918, are buried. For Poles, the cemetery is a symbol of patriotic commitment, while Ukrainians see it as a symbol of oppression. The Lviv city authorities have not agreed to restore the cemetery to its original shape as the Polish side would like to do.
I saw this cemetery, walked amid it.
I spent an afternoon in this cemetery.
At the time, it was pretty much like the rest of Ukraine, severely deteriorated and falling apart even more, but yet oddly green and peaceful.
Lizol; franksolich.
Do you know which cemetery it's about ? Is it about Lychakivski Cemetery ? I lived in Lviv (aka Lemberg, Lwow, Lvov ) first 19 years of my life. I heard that Polish graves were desecrated by some Ukrainian Radical Nationalists on Lychakivski sometime in 1998. There is also a large number of Polish graves in Janovski Hill Cemetery. A lot of people of various origins who lived in Lviv are buried there. There are Jewish and Christian (Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, etc.) quarters on Janovski Cemetery. There is also a Military Cemetery--"Hill of Glory"--that has burials of World War II Russian/Soviet and World War I Russian and Austro-Hungarian Soldiers (including Poles, Chechs, etc) soldiers.
Me and my family were also very worried about the left behind graves of our relatives. My maternal grand-parents and paternal great-grand parents are buried in the Janovski Hill Cemetery respectively at Christian and Jewish quarters. I could be wrong, but I heard that during Kuchma times the Lviv city council wanted to build a large monument to WWI era Ukraine Nationalist soldiers (Shooters or "Sichovi Strilci" ) on the place of existing graves of Janovski Hill. I believe it was agreed to move monument somewhere else, so it would not disturb the graves of those who lie there.
Me and my parents immigrated from Lviv to US in 1993, and I've never came back to Lviv since. Someday, I would simply like to go to visit Lviv for a short time just to see the graves of my paternal great-grand parents and maternal grand-parents. There is nothing else really that connects me to the city of my birth anymore--I felt really alienated after anybody of Russian Ancestry or Russian Speakers in the late 1980's or early 1990's were called "agressors" or "occupiers" by radical Ukrainian Nationalists in this part of Ukraine--even those who lived in Lviv for generations.
However, I naturally always worry how the memory of my ancestors (and anybody else's) is preserved. Fortunately, our distant relatives who still live in Lviv look after these graves. Sorry for this personal story, but because I have a few dear to me people buried in Lviv, I naturally became curious.
Now wait a minute, partner.
Don't try that old Soviet trick on me.
What those photographs show are just a part of the cemetery, and even though there are four photographs, they are essentially of the same area.
An old Soviet trick; the only thing missing is that the pictures were not taken at a distance.
I was in that cemetery about this time of the year (very early spring, April), during the mid-1990s, and it was considerably littered--Ukrainians love their booze, but have no convenient places to toss away the empty bottles--and many of the tombstones outside the range of these photographs were tipping, tipped over, or vandalized.
Thanks Lizol for letting me know. I thought it was Lychakivski. I visited it only from the outside--never inside. At least it shows that Ukraine in some ways may move in more civilized direction, but we have to see this.
Glad that decency and the respect to the dead prevailed.
Anyway, someday, I would like to visit the graves of my relatives buried in Janovski Cemetery. If I ever go back, I'd like to visit Lychakivski too. However, at this point, I simply not feel like going back for visit and neither my parents. Maybe we are wrong, but anyone who ever had an experience of bad inter-neighbor and inter-ethnic relations will understand.
You know, sir, that intrigues me.
I spent a year in Ukraine, and then several more months in Russia (near Tambov)--away from the cities, and with the peasants and their natural sanitary facilities, their bed-bugs, their lice, and their rats (but wonderful people nonetheless, the hearty peasants)--and while I had heard much about "ethnic tensions" in the former Soviet Union, well, I must have missed all of them.
In fact, I had not even thought about "ethnic tensions" until the day before yesterday when, on another Eastern Europe ping list thread, I posted an innocent question about the late Archbishop Stepinac of Yugoslavia.....
.....after which I learned, yeah, there ARE ethnic tensions over there, and they are real, and vigorous.
Ooooooops.
This may be the same as the Lyczykowski Cemetery.
That would be the one which was the site of the monument to the three American volunteer pilots who fought in the Kosciuszko Squadron against the Bolsheviks in 1919-1920. One of the pictures above shows a triangle with a bird on it. The monument to the Americans also was a similar triangle, with the statue of a winged pilot in the center. It bore the inscription (in Polish and English) "To American heroes who gave their lives for Poland, 1919-1920."
The contribution of the Kosciusko Squadron was crucial to Polish independence. Not one of the American volunteers was of Polish decent; not one spoke Polish: yet they fought bravely and skillfully, and sacrificed for a people yearning for independence. Their story should be remembered. It is material for a feature-length movie!
I had read that the monument was intentionally destroyed by Soviet tanks.
[Sorry, I can't get the proper diacritical marks to work on this posting.]
Wasn't there an RAF squadron of Polish airmen in WWII also called the Kosciuszko Squadron?
Same name, different squads, different times and circumstances.
If you had visited Lviv in the late 1980's and early 1990's and spoke unaccented Russian in the stores, you could have been refused sales. Such thing happened. There were also verbal (and even physical abuses) of those who conversed in Russian in public buses, trolleys or trams. My father, mother, my brother and I all witnessed it at one point or another. It really happened. There is simply no justification to this behavior. Stalinism and Communist oppression as horrible as they were cannot be blamed on every single Russian Speaker who may be living in Lviv for generations.
Maybe these attitudes are no longer there--we are all in United States now and have never been back for more than a decade. Some of our friends and relatives went there recently--things may have changed, but at this point I still don't feel like going back--right or wrong. One thing to visit Lviv for someone who is a curious tourists--another thing is to visit for someone who had been living there a significant part of his life, had a few relatives buried there and who along with his parents was called "occupier". My parents are ordinarily children of USSR. They were born during WWII (Mother in Russia proper, Father in Eastern Ukraine) and they settled in Lviv with their families as little kids shortly after WWII was over. Lviv and Ukraine knew nothing bad from them--only good--I can assure you. I was born in Lviv in 1973 and I have never served in either Soviet Army or other Soviet Power or Civil Service structures, so I simply could not be occupier by definition. My parents while living in Lviv worked in various Technical and Educational institutions (civilian fields only), and they made their contribution to the civilian technical fields of both Soviet and Independent Ukraine (i.e. Water Distribution, Machine Tools repair, Electronics, etc).
I had many pleasant memories too of my childhood, but there were also quite a few unpleasant memories based largely on inter-ethnic and linguistic tensions when Ukraine was becoming independent country in late 1980's and early 1990's. Fortunately, there was no wide-spread ethnic clashes, but I still don't feel like going back even for a short visit. Maybe it will change.
That's the first I've heard of the "American" Kosciuszko squadron. That's another great example of the ties between Poland and the US.
It seems to me that I showed up in Ukraine about a year or two after you left.
At the time, I had the impression that most Ukrainians wished to be considered "Russian" (this was during hard times, when the karbovanet, the currency, was inflating faster than a balloon), because even though they were Ukrainian, they thought being Ukrainian was "second class."
Perhaps a hold-over from the former Soviet Union, and perhaps it is different now.
Actually, while I was there, I knew nothing of the Ukrainian and Russian languages; which was unimportant anyway, because I am deaf, and would not be able to hear the languages even if I understood them.
Because of this (deafness) and because I was an American, and because I was an American there on my own (i.e., not sponsored by any individual or organization), going all over the place, wandering into some of the most unusual (or preposterous) situations, I think it was the common human instinct of Ukrainians to "shield" me from their infighting with the Russians.
So it was probably going on--these bad feelings--but I was not aware of it, not hearing it.
You see, Frank--you can't really feel what's going beneath the surface if you are a just a foreign tourist. The locals will be naturally sympathetic to you and try to shield you from less pleasant side of life. When I visited as a tourist United Kingdom in 2000, it was a novel to hear about lingering English/Scottish tensions from our tour guide. I th9ought that whatever happened between England and Scotland centuries ago was left behind, but alas, too many people everywhere prefer passions and historical grievances (real or imaginary) rather then behaving rationally. I heard a few Scottish jokes about English, but I couldn't say I experienced English/Scottish tension because I'm neither English, nor Scot--ordinary American tourist of Russian/Ukrainian background.
For you going to Lviv was probably pretty much like visiting a Zoo--no offense meant of course -:))) Strange people behaving strangely -:))) You have to be born, grew up and experience the life there to understand it more intimately. I think things have changed right now in some respect, although because of Putin attempt to interfere in the recent Ukrainian election, there might be still animosity toward Russian/Russian Speaking people in Western Ukraine. Maybe someday I'll forget all of this and come to Ukraine just for a short visit, but not at this point.
<<was not a tourist in Ukraine.
I am not sure of the proper word, but something more resembling "adventurer" or "buccaneer," in the sense that I just went there to see what was there, who was there.
<<brought back no tourist souvenirs, not even postcards, from Ukraine.
<<only "tourist site" I saw in Ukraine was the Percherska Lavra; otherwise "inspected" schools, military bases, factories, power plants, farms, and villages.
Most fascinating place visited: Chernobyl, and walking around the cities that had been deserted in 1986; the "ghost towns."
<<was "arrested" three times by the Ukrainian police from state security, and one time by the army.
<<was a legal visitor in Ukraine (and later Russia), but was an illegal alien in Moldova.
<<spent no American dollars in Ukraine; only Ukrainian karbovanets--also stayed away from the stupid "hard currency" stores.
<<dined more on Belomar Kanal cigarettes and mahorka than on food.
<<lost 62 pounds while in Ukraine, and returned here almost a cadaver, severely underweight, even the socks too big to stay up.
If a "tourist," not exactly the usual sort of tourist.....but it was one of the best times of my life.
Wonderful people, the Ukrainians.
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