Lwów Eaglets

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"Lwów Eaglets; Defenders of the Cemetery", painting by Wojciech Kossak, 1926, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm, Polish Army Museum, Warsaw

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 (such as Antoni Petrykiewicz), 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 the area of Eastern Galicia 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, himself an Eaglet. Among the most notable Eaglets to be buried there was 14-year-old Jerzy Bitschan, youngest of the city's defenders, whose name became an icon of the Polish interbellum.

After the annexation of Eastern Galicia with the city of Lwów by the Soviet Union in 1939 (see: Polish September Campaign), the graves were destroyed in 1971, and the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów was turned into a municipal waste dump and then 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. The last surviving Lwow Eaglet, Major Aleksander Sałacki (born 12 May 1904), died in Tychy, on April 5, 2008.