Lwów Eaglets
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Lwów Eaglets (Polish: Orlęta lwowskie) is a term of affection applied to the Polish child soldiers who defended the city of Lwów during the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918-1919).
Originally the term was applied exclusively to young volunteers who had participated in the defense of Lwów during the city's siege by the Ukrainian army from November 1 to November 22, 1918. With time, however, the term's application was broadened, and it is now used for all the young soldiers who fought in that area in defense of Poland in the Polish-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Bolshevik War. In addition to the young defenders of Lwów, those of Przemyśl are also frequently referred to as Orlęta.
After the Polish-Ukrainian conflict, the Lwów Eaglets were interred at the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów, part of the Łyczaków Cemetery. The Cemetery of the Defenders held the remains of both child 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 Lwów institute of architecture and himself an Eaglet. Among the most notable Eaglets to be buried there was 14-year-old Jurek Bitschan, youngest of the city's defenders, whose name became an icon of the Polish interbellum. After the annexation of Eastern Galicia with Lwów by the Soviet Union in 1939, the graves were destroyed (in 1971) and the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów turned into a municipal waste dump and after into truck depot. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of an independent Ukraine, work began on the restoration of the "Eaglets' Cemetery," although slowed by opposition from Ukrainian nationalists. Following Polish support for Ukraine's Orange Revolution (2004), Ukrainian opposition declined and the Cemetery was officially reopened in a Polish-Ukrainian ceremony on June 24, 2005.
