Poles take Lviv

On the morning of 22 November 1918 Lviv was in Polish hands. During the night the Ukrainian troops, threatened with encirclement, quietly left the city centre and withdrew to the east. At about five in the morning Lieutenant Roman Abraham hung the white-and-red flag on the tower of the town hall, over which the Ukrainian banner had been flying since 1 November. Thus ended three weeks of street fighting for the capital of Galicia. The British official chronology of the war records the capture of Lviv by the Poles under 23 November, and some accounts move the Ukrainian withdrawal to the night of 22–23 November. Participants’ accounts and monographs of the fighting, Polish and Ukrainian alike, nevertheless agree on the night of 21–22 November and the morning of 22 November.

The outcome was decided by the relief force. After Piłsudski took power and Przemyśl was retaken from the Ukrainians, General Bolesław Roja sent to Lviv the group of Lieutenant-Colonel Michał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz: according to Michał Klimecki, 140 officers, 1,228 men and 8 guns. The relief force reached the city by train on 20 November, during a truce. On the morning of 21 November, when the truce expired, the Poles attacked. The attack in the city centre and in the north, in Zamarstynów and at the Citadel (PL), stalled, but in the south Polish units went through Pohulanka, took the Łyczakowski Cemetery and reached the station in Łyczaków. In this way they threatened the Ukrainians’ only line of retreat to the east. In the evening the Ukrainian commander, Colonel Hnat Stefaniv, ordered the city to be abandoned.

The withdrawal was carried out efficiently and in secret. According to Klimecki, about 120 officers and 3,185 front-line soldiers left Lviv. The retreating troops set fire to the building of the Diet and to the stores at the Citadel. The Poles realised what had happened only towards morning and at first suspected a ruse. Large stocks of weapons, ammunition and food fell into their hands, however, and the inhabitants greeted the soldiers in the streets with enthusiasm. According to Klimecki’s tally, 439 people were killed or died of wounds on the Polish side in the three-week defence, including 120 schoolboys and 76 students. Ukrainian accounts give about 250 killed on their side. The Ukrainian forces did not go far. They took up positions around the city, to the east, north and south, and their command moved to Kurovychi. The next day General Roja appointed Czesław Mączyński, until then commandant of the defence, commandant of the city.

The day of victory also had a dark side. On 22 November itself a pogrom broke out in the Jewish districts and lasted until 24 November. Polish soldiers, including men from volunteer units, took part in it, as did civilians, among them criminals released from the prisons at the start of the fighting. It was justified as retaliation for the alleged support given to the Ukrainians by the Jewish militia, which had declared its neutrality and which the Polish military press accused of shooting at Poles. Shops and flats were looted, several synagogues and many houses were set on fire, and inhabitants were murdered. The number of victims is disputed: the Jewish relief committee gave 73 killed and more than 400 wounded, the American Morgenthau commission in 1919 gave 64 killed, and the Polish government commission about 150. Roja ordered a state of emergency and summary courts on 22 November, but the order was announced only on 24 November. According to William Hagen, 79 people later stood before military courts, of whom 44 were convicted.

The capture of Lviv did not end the fighting for the city. The Ukrainians besieged it for another six months, and only the Polish offensive in May 1919 pushed the front back from its outskirts. News of the pogrom, meanwhile, went round the European and American press and long weighed on the image of the reborn Poland.