Krakowianie legioniści w niewoli i zaginieni w latach I wojny światowej

Abstrakt

KRAKÓW LEGIONARIES TAKEN PRISONER AND GONE MISSING DURING WORLD WAR I

The article aims at drawing attention to a group of soldiers of the Polish Legions who were taken prisoner or went missing during World War I, and to a source that has not yet been taken into account in historical studies. That source is the list of legionaries classified as MIAs and POWs that was drawn up in 1917 by the General Register at the Military Department of the Supreme National Committee (Naczelny Komitet Narodowy). The list has been in the collection of the Central Military Archives in Warsaw. Preserved in the form of two bound volumes, the source consists of 3,035 alphabetized names. The article comprises two parts. Part one is concerned with the origins and contents of the said source. Drawing on particular examples, an insight has also been provided into the problems connected with help for the imprisoned legionaries that was offered in Galicia as well as on an international level, and with the conditions of their imprisonment on the Russian territory. A list of Kraków legionaries taken prisoner and gone missing during World War I has been included as part two of the article. The criterion for distinguishing the group of Kraków legionaries from within the abovementioned record has been the fact of given soldier’s having been born in Kraków or having lived in the city for a long time before the war in connection with his education in a local school or employment status. Out of the 113 legionaries from Kraków, fourteen names were annotated as having returned or escaped from captivity. There could have been more such cases in the later period. Most MIAs and POWs – seventy- three – served in the II Brigade of the Polish Legions; twenty were members of the I Brigade, and fourteen of the III Brigade. Six names were quoted without particulars of their assignment to any particular formation. The large number of people from Kraków in the II Brigade resulted from the conscription that was carried out in Kraków and its environs and the assignment of the recruits to units that became parts of the said formation. Fifty-three men from Kraków – and most of the group in early July 1916 – either went missing or were taken prisoner during the fights in Volhynia, while thirty-four during the fights in the Carpathians. The analyzed group of soldiers is a sample that proves the usefulness of register-type materials for learning about the fate of individual men. Furthermore, the studied register may contribute to analyzing the professional and age structures of the Polish Legions, to determining the areas and places whose dwellers joined the ranks of the formation in the largest numbers, as well as to specifying the territories where earlier political efforts helped shape such attitudes that resulted in men’s volunteering for the Legions.