As soon as
fighting in the city ceased, we, like thousands of our fellow citizens, came
out to the streets. This walk became a memory for a lifetime, because after
five years of occupation, I saw white and red flags on the City Hall tower, on
the houses and in the windows of my city... They bloomed like the most
beautiful flowers where the war had recently raged.
What a terrible
contrast was the next day and the hours that followed. First, in place of our
white and red symbols, blue and yellow, i.e. Ukrainian flags, appeared, and
then, when they were torn off, the hated symbols of sickle and hammer could be
seen, and messages were posted on the walls joyfully announcing that the Red
Army liberated the city once again to be incorporated into Soviet Ukraine
forever. The ominous news that the Home Army in Lviv had laid down arms and its
entire command was arrested turned out to be a tragic truth.
(Wanda
Niemczycka-Babel, The Years of War, 1939-1945)
At the end of the war, the Polish
government in exile hoped that the territories annexed by the USSR in the
autumn of 1939 in accordance with a secret protocol to the Ribbentrop-Molotov
Pact would be restored. The Soviet-Polish relations during the war were very
tense, especially after the Nazis exposed the shootings in Katyn, which killed
about 15,000 Polish army officers. Moscow used the Polish protests in April
1943 as a pretext to declare a severance of relations with the Polish
government.
Restoring the 1941 borders was one of the
military goals of the Soviet leaders. Finally, as early as the autumn of 1943
at the Tehran conference, Stalin agreed with Churchill and Roosevelt beforehand
that the eastern borders of the Polish state would run along the Curzon line (a
conditional dividing line proposed by British diplomat George Curzon as a
possible truce border in the war between Bolshevik Russia and Poland in
1920–1921). Poland, on the other hand, was to receive territorial compensation
in the West. Immediately after that, the pressure on the Polish government in
exile intensified. However, the issue of Poland's eastern borders remained
uncertain, especially for the Polish government in exile.
Back in March 1942, General Władysław
Sikorski in his "Personal and Secret Instructions for the National
Commander" gave the Polish underground armed forces a task to get ready for
taking back power in pre-war Eastern Poland during the retreat of German
troops. In late 1943, this plan was called the Operation Storm. The priority
was to take control of Lviv before the entry of the Red Army, to act as the
master of the city and an equal partner in negotiations with the USSR.
On July 7, 1944, the commander of the Home
Army’s Lviv district, Colonel Władysław Filipkowski, was ordered to begin
implementing the Storm plan. The task was to take over the city and create a Polish
administration in Lviv for representation before the troops of the First
Ukrainian Front. Filipkowski had about 7,000 armed soldiers at his disposal. In
addition, the so-called "forest units", i.e. combat groups whose task
was to paralyze the activities of transport communications, were involved on
the outskirts of Lviv.
When the German occupation administration of the
District of Galicia left the city on the night of July 23, Home Army units attacked the retreating
Wehrmacht division in the morning. During the fighting, Home Army units managed
to capture the outskirts of the railway station, the suburb of Holosko, Pohulianka
and some area around ul. Kochanowskiego (now vul. Kostia Levytskoho), where the
uprising headquarters were located in the building number 23.
On July 26, the Polish flag was raised on
the City Hall tower, with the flags of the Alied powers: the United States, Great
Britain, France and the USSR below. Colonel Filipkowski was awarded the Order
of Virtuti Militari for the successful operation. For two days, Home Army
soldiers with white and red armbands patrolled the streets of Lviv along with
Soviet soldiers. However, the following day Colonel Filipkowski was summoned to
the NKVD department, where it was declared that Lviv was a Soviet city and an
ultimatum was issued: to immediately remove Polish flags in the city, to stop
patrolling the streets, to concentrate units in barracks and to lay down their arms.
The next day, the command of the Home Army’s Lviv district and representatives
of the Polish administration were invited to a meeting at the headquarters at
vul. Kochanowskiego 23. When they gathered, the building was surrounded by NKVD
men and all participants of the meeting were taken to the prison on ul.
Łąckiego. The leaders of the Operation Storm were sentenced to 10-20 years in
prison. A wave of arrests of the Home Army military and deportations to Soviet
camps took place in the city.
On November 1, 1944, several thousand Poles
in Lviv staged a large-scale protest at the Lychakiv Cemetery. Inscriptions
reading “We will not give Lviv to the USSR!” and “Glory to the fighters for
Polish Lviv” appeared at the burial place of Soviet soldiers. Demonstrators
sang the Polish national anthem and shouted anti-Soviet slogans. At the same
time, both internationally and directly in the city, Soviet control over Lviv
was growing.