An historic Polish cemetery in the Ukrainian city of Lviv will be officially opened on June 24 after a protracted tug-of-war between Poland and Ukraine. Some 3,000 soldiers, mainly young people, are buried there, hence the name - the Young Eagles cemetery. They fell between 1918 and 1919, defending Lviv or Lvov, an important Polish city at the time, against Ukrainian troops.
Negotiations on the opening of the historic cemetery lasted 7 years but the roots of the dispute go back much deeper – to 1918, when the Austro-Hungarian empire was crumbling at the end of World War I. Ukrainians, whose land was a part of Poland then, took this opportunity to seize Lviv from Polish hands and encountered fierce opposition from its young, mainly teenage defenders. Lviv remained Polish until after World War II, when Stalin re-wrote the borders, snatching the eastern territories form Poland and incorporating Ukraine into the Soviet Union. For Poles the Young Eagles cemetery is a cherished symbol of a patriotic struggle while Ukrainians associate it with Polish domination.
During Soviet rule, the cemetery was used as a waste dump, graves and sculptures crumbled, many were razed to the ground. In 1989, when the Soviet empire was itself collapsing, steps were taken to protect the site and five years later, a Polish-Ukrainian agreement was signed on its reconstruction. But in 1997, the Ukrainian authorities ordered all work at the cemetery to stop, claiming that the inscriptions on the graves, lauding Polish heroism, had an anti-Ukrainian character. A long tug-of-war began but it seems that at last, all obstacles have been removed.
Poland’s president Aleksander Kwasniewski:
“The cemetery is in a good state and ready to be opened,"sais Poland's president Aleksander Kwasniewski.
"It should be a site of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation. I will attend the opening ceremony.”
Director of the Lviv City Development Institute, Andryi Sadovyi, points out that the breakthrough is a result of changes in Poland and Ukraine.
“The Polish side had many complaints. They were voiced by people who wanted to capitalize on this dispute. On the Ukrainian side, too, a similar trend prevailed. Now, a new group of politicians appeared who are solving the problems, without turning them into a political issue.”
The decision to open the Polish cemetery in Lviv is of major significance for the further development of Polish-Ukrainian relations. Poland, on its part, has pledged to help restore Ukrainian cemeteries in Poland. |